


Seven Types of Love

by redaurorarora



Series: Seven Types of Love [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sparrow Academy (Umbrella Academy), Canon-typical language, Diego didn't look at Five when he talked about family love in 2x10 and I took that personally, Everyone Needs A Hug, Familial Love, Family Feels, Gen, Hurt Number Five | The Boy, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28482615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redaurorarora/pseuds/redaurorarora
Summary: In which Five wonders why Diego didn’t look at him when he talked about his family loving each other, and Lila goes back to 2019 with the Hargreeves for not altogether altruistic purposes. Predictably, this doesn’t go well for Five. Less predictably, it leads to the Hargreeves finally learning a little bit about caring for themselves and each other.Alternatively: According to some, there are seven types of love. There’s romantic love, of course, which seems to get the most attention for some reason. The other six types are of equal importance though. Love that’s playful. Love that’s practical. Universal love. Love of friends, of family, and of self.Five wonders if anyone will ever feel one towards him.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Number Five | The Boy & Allison Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Diego Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Everyone
Series: Seven Types of Love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2194188
Comments: 100
Kudos: 317





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, y’all, get ready. Do I have a fic in a different fandom that I haven’t updated in almost four years? Yes. Have I not written a lick of fanfiction in that four-year period? You bet I haven’t. Am I publishing a new fic in a new fandom (aka this one) that started as one self-indulgent scene I wrote in September and has grown into a multi-chaptered mess that maybe (hopefully?) has *meaning*? Absolutely.
> 
> I have no idea how long it will be between posts because I have a job, alternating bouts of depression and anxiety, and am writing a book (it’s non-fiction for academia, so not this type of writing, in case anyone reads this story and thinks “dear lord, they think they can write a book?!”). I’m going to do my best, but I don’t want to make any deadline promises that will stress me or readers out.
> 
> There will be no Sparrow Academy here. I’ve gone back and forth on that A LOT, but I’m thinking that most of the Sparrow part would be me getting the sibs out of the house then everything going as I’ve planned it out. I do at least know how I would’ve gotten them away from the Sparrows, but maybe that will be another story.
> 
> The End Notes have more about where the title comes from.

* * *

_Seven Types of Love: Agape, Eros, Ludus, Philia, Pragma, Philautia, Storge_

* * *

It was all because of a tractor. Diego supposed maybe he should be thankful. Who knows where Lila would have gone with the briefcase if she’d gotten to it?

He would’ve stopped Luther. He could have easily, okay? Anyone who thought differently was an idiot. It was just that a stupid tractor had fallen on his stupid leg. As soon as he tried to do more than stand on it, he ended up on his back blinking up at the ceiling of the barn. 

Off to the side, there was a wooden thud. The briefcase sat abandoned on the ground well out of Lila’s reach where Luther had her pinned securely to the wall. 

The man who had gunned down Lila’s mother stood silhouetted in the door. It was the Dutch guy ( _Swedish, you moron,_ Five’s voice corrected in his head) who had attacked him with brass knuckles at the Mexican Consulate. The gun he was holding was, admittedly, more threatening than the brass knuckles he’d used before. Shit. How many knifes did he have left? Could he hit the Swede before the Swede fired again? Could he stop bullets like he had earlier?

He was reaching for his belt when Five moved, pointing his own gun at the man. Diego froze. Wasn’t that just the perfect representation of his brother? Standing between his family and danger, armed and ready to kill to protect them.

Somehow, no one else died. Five’s throw-down-your-gun gambit had paid off and the Swede had walked away. Lila was struggling against Luther, but he wasn’t letting up. Distantly, Diego’s ankle throbbed in complaint as he pushed himself to his feet and rolled it back and forth a few times. 

Five had strode over and picked up the briefcase as soon as the Swede had turned around. Now he had it clutched to his chest while he stared down at the Handler’s body. They’d had a fraught relationship, right? Whatever the hell that entailed. From Five’s expression, it seemed like it was complex and long-standing and not something any of them could deal with right now, least of all Diego. 

“Who the hell was that guy?” Klaus yelped somewhere behind him.

Diego limped over to Luther and Lila.

“I got her,” he said.

“You sure?” Luther tossed back with an uncertain glance that almost immediately shifted a few feet behind him. Diego turned to see Five’s blank eyes raise from the body on the ground to Luther, then shift between Diego and Lila. When he landed back on Luther, he gave a stiff nod. Luther let Lila up. 

When the hell had Luther become Five’s lap dog? Was he really that desperate for a father figure that he’d latch onto his own brother? You know what, no. Not right now. Another problem for another time. 

“Why did you try to stop me?” Luther asked.

Diego gently grabbed Lila’s hand. She looked lost, her gaze very purposefully avoiding the Handler’s body. 

“I love her.”

There was a sharp intake of breath somewhere, but before it fully registered, the woman who owned the farm – Sissy? – was calling for Vanya and the whole family was tromping downstairs. 

* * *

It was all because of a tractor. At least that’s what Five was told after the fact.

The Handler was dead on the ground. His brain didn’t quite know what to do with that information, so for the moment it did nothing. The Handler was dead. His siblings were alive. He was somehow not bleeding out from gunshot wounds. The Swede would be coming in any second though.

This wasn’t done yet.

“The case!” Luther yelled, followed by a brief moment of chaos.

Shit, the briefcase! He couldn’t very well go for it now, not while the Swede was standing there, fresh from murdering the Handler, gun still poised to fire. His own gun – well, the Handler’s gun – was half the size of his twip of a teenage body. He needed both hands to hold it. He had to protect his family. But he also needed to get his family home. To get his family home, he needed a briefcase, and he couldn’t very well count on any of the ones that had been exposed to Vanya’s blast being undamaged.

Five could only watch and trust his siblings. His siblings who couldn’t meet a simple deadline. Who started apocalypses like some families have picnics or political arguments. Shit.

Lila ran for the briefcase. Luther lunged after her. Diego spun to grab him.

It turned out he didn’t have to worry. Luther made it to Lila first because Diego dropped as soon as he twisted his injured leg.

It was only after the Swede had walked away and Vanya had talked down Harlan and taken her powers back from him - seriously, he had left her alone for a month and she managed to figure out how to transfer powers? – that he’d leaned over to Luther and asked why Diego had a limp.

And wasn’t that a gas? Lila had really shot herself in the foot. Well, metaphorically. Literally, she’d landed a tractor on her foot. Diego’s foot. Whatever.

Five had worked at the Commission for, well, long enough. Before that, he’d studied time travel for decades with a dogged obsession that may well have qualified as a diagnosable disorder had he not been in the middle of an apocalyptic wasteland. As much as he hated to admit it, he would’ve done beautifully if he’d stayed in Management for more than a day. He worked in causal determination and butterfly effects the way sculptors worked in clay.

There was a timeline where Lila disappeared with that briefcase. One tweak - making sure Diego’s ankle was too bruised to support sudden movement - and that timeline branched off from theirs. It was so well executed that for a moment he wondered if someone had been assigned to create this very outcome. He was pretty sure he couldn’t have done it better himself.

Maybe some Commission agent had been hiding out pulling strings somewhere. Five had missed all that excitement, so he’d never know. In his defense, he’d been trapped under a table, then under a collapsed chimney’s worth of bricks, then fighting Diego’s girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend? He glanced over. While his other siblings were still congratulating Vanya on her success with Harlan, Diego was holding Lila at arm’s length, talking quietly to her. She still looked a bit shell-shocked, but managed a nod and let herself get pulled into a hug. Diego relaxed infinitesimally. Girlfriend it was.

Jesus, he would love to not keep up with his siblings’ romantic escapades except now one of said escapades had nailed him in the forehead with a pan, which meant he was never trusting any of their judgments ever again.

_I love her._

There was a pang of something in his chest he didn’t have time to deal with right now.

At least everyone seemed to be safe for now. He sure as hell wasn’t going to reverse time again, so hopefully that meant the end of the Handler. It felt like something he should savor, maybe even revel in, but it was hard to feel anything. Sue him. He’d just seen his siblings die again while bleeding out himself then finally figuring out the time travel aspect of his powers.

All it took was 45 years of hell and a brief conversation with a slightly less asshole-ish version of his father. Older, more asshole-ish 2002 Reginald could shove it. How hard was it to tell a 13-year-old “start small” and “seconds, not decades” instead of a load of bullshit about ice and acorns?

Hmm. It was possible he didn’t feel completely in his body at the moment. That was fine, though, because they had a briefcase and the Handler was dead.

He hugged the briefcase tighter to his chest.

They could finally go home.

* * *

There were two beach chairs sitting on the porch. Sissy must have put them there after everything settled down because the wall behind them was mottled with more bullet holes than paint but the chairs were untouched. Diego collapsed into one of them and rested his head on the back of it. The past few hours had been…a lot.

Dot and Herb had shown up to confirm the Commission wasn’t on their tails anymore. Five seemed particularly wary of that reassurance. He’d hung back to talk with Herb while Diego took Dot to officially confirm the Handler’s demise. For Commission records, of course.

After that, it had been a whirlwind of clean-ups and injury care. With Harlan’s powers under control, the weather had finally stabilized but the temperature hadn’t quite evened out yet, and the snow on the ground made the chill more prominent. Sissy had dug some jackets out of a closet and had even managed to wrestle Five into one. Well, she’d asked passive aggressive concerned questions about the cold that Five had quickly shot down, then sent him worried looks while he tried to help her dig heirlooms out of the warzone that was her house. After an hour, he’d finally let his head drop with a sigh and given in with a “if you must.” So really, she had emotionally wrestled him into a coat, which was almost more impressive than if she’d done it physically.

Sissy had also forced them all to eat at least a sandwich after they’d helped her clean and pack. Vanya had helped make them, which was sort of adorable but also somehow heartbreaking knowing they’d be in different decades by the end of the day. Diego had finished his quickly and excused himself to do a final sweep before they left. In reality, he just wanted to take in the late afternoon light. He’d never been this far south before outside of in-and-out Umbrella Academy missions. Free time in the asylum hadn’t coincided with it, and he’d been too focused on JFK to care anyway. JFK was dead, but his siblings and Lila were all safe, so he might as well take a moment.

It was different than the light he was used to in a way he couldn’t quite put into words. Not in a bad way. It was actually nice. Warmer maybe? There was no reason for it to make his chest clinch up with longing the way it was.

Homesickness, he realized. For a place he hadn’t even known he thought of as home. Hell, he’d openly declared his love for siblings he had been fully prepared to walk away from for another decade barely three months ago.

Apocalypses did weird things to emotions.

What was left of the screen door creaked open and Five walked out of the house wiping crumbs from the corner of his mouth. Between that and Harlan’s coat, he looked closer to his physical age than he had since 2019. He froze the second he noticed Diego, an unreadable expression on his face. Weird. Diego gestured to the chair beside him. Five approached slowly, like he was waiting to spring a trap. When no such trap manifested, he sat. His coat bunched up around his neck. Trying to shift it around just bunched it at his armpits instead. Diego snorted. Five collapsed back in the chair with a put-upon sigh.

“Thought you were going to make sure the Commission had cleaned up everything in the field,” Five said.

“I was. Wanted to sit for a minute. Haven’t had much time to, you know?”

Five looked out at the horizon. “Yeah.”

They sat, two brothers taking in the Texas sky. Of course, Five couldn’t let it be.

“You want Lila to come back with us, don’t you?”

It sounded resigned.

“You want to leave her here?”

“I want to hand her over to the Commission.”

Diego sat up straighter in the chair. “What?! You just want to hand her off? Like some kind of criminal? She’s one of us!”

Five rolled his head to meet his gaze. “She’s one of them. She was raised by the Handler. She’s been an assassin for as long as you – we – have been the Umbrella Academy.”

“She’s her own person! You saw her in the barn. I was getting through to her. She brought me to the Commission because she was scared and wanted an out!”

Five raised his eyebrows. “She drugged and kidnapped you. After spending several months weaseling into your good graces so she and the Handler could get to me.”

“It was more than that. She cares about me.”

“Everything you think you know about her is a lie.”

“It’s not!” It couldn’t be. He cared about her. He hadn’t felt this way about someone since-

Five scoffed. “You don’t know anything. Her whole purpose here was to manipulate you. A purpose she succeeded at, obviously. You don’t know-“

He cut himself off with a huff, looking back at the field.

“I don’t know what? Huh? Go ahead, tell me all about what I don’t know. I went to the Commission, remember? I worked the Infinite Switchboard-“

“If I have to hear about the Infinite Switchboard one more goddamn time, I’m going to strangle you with your own intestines,” Five snapped back. “You _watched_ the Infinite Switchboard get worked by someone else. You were at the Commission for, what, a few hours? Half a day? You made a couple of friends? Met maybe a dozen people? I worked there for years, Diego. You have no idea what they’re like. What they make you do. What they do to you. You’re seriously asking me what you don’t know? Anything. You don’t know anything about the Commission, and you don’t know anything about who Lila really is.”

“I know enough.”

Five sneered, “You really don’t.”

He opened his mouth to retort, then shut it. The conversation had gone off the rails, well, about as quickly as he’d thought a conversation with Five would go off the rails actually. But, as much as a hit to his pride as it was, Five may have a point. In the end, Diego knew very little about the Commission, Lila’s mother, and Lila’s upbringing. Even he could acknowledge that. He knew Lila was a good person deep down, but he was also self-aware enough to know his defense of her was more an automatic reaction to his brother’s challenge than anything else. Thanks, mandated group therapy.

He loved Lila. He would do almost anything for her. But he couldn’t trust her just yet. It was a dissonance he was still working on. He needed the time with her to do that though, and to prove to his siblings and to Lila that she can see the good in people, in the world around her. The good in him.

He was going about this wrong. Five was a pragmatist, right? And he made decisions based on logic and mathematical proofs. The rest of the siblings had joked about it growing up when Reginald had forced them to learn about rhetoric and debate. There were two key strategies to winning an argument with Five: (1) Pandering to his intelligence and (2) logic. That, he could work with.

“You’re right.”

Five narrowed his eyes. “I’m what now?”

Diego pressed on. “I don’t know as much as I’d like about the Commission. And…they were super shady even in the time I was there. Like, that orientation video? I watched five minutes of it and it was all straight up creepy propaganda.”

“Yes,” Five said slowly. “I’m…glad your caveman brain was at least able to recognize that fact.”

“But wouldn’t it be better if you could keep track of Lila? You wouldn’t have to worry about her popping up out of nowhere because she’ll be with us the whole time.”

Oh, there was a look Diego had forgotten about. He hadn’t seen it in seventeen years. It was Five’s you’re-making-a-decent-point-and-I-don’t-like-it face.

He allowed himself an internal fist pump, then continued, “You can keep an eye on her. Plus, with the Handler’s training, do you really think the Commission will be able to contain her?”

Five was fidgeting like he wanted to be writing. He probably did. The old man wrote more equations than Einstein. After a long moment, he started to shake his head. No. Surely, Five didn’t have a comeback for that. It was all perfectly logical! What could he possibly argue against it? And yet he could tell his brother was about to do just that.

“Please, Five,” he blurted before Five could shut him down. “Just…give her a chance. She’s important to me.”

Shit, he’d blown it. Why had he felt compelled to beg? It would never work. Five didn’t have time for emotions and he certainly wouldn’t respect a personal argument. Any second, he would scoff and reprimand Diego for letting pesky things like feelings cloud his judgment.

Except Five had stopped short and gone quiet, his gaze distant.

“Because you love her,” his brother murmured, almost to himself. He looked pained.

“Yeah,” Diego said carefully. “Because I love her.”

More silence.

“Five?”

With a jolt, Five’s attention was back on Diego. Whatever had been in his eyes before was gone, replaced with his usual annoyed indifference.

“Fine,” he said. “Bring her with us. If she kills us all, that’s on you.”

The chair scraped against the wooden planks of the porch as Five pushed himself up and stormed away.

What the hell was that all about? He almost went to follow Five, but what good would it do? The old man needed to cool off. Diego had gotten his way and he wasn’t going to press his luck.

Lila was going to come back with them. His stomach fluttered at the thought, whether from excitement, nerves, or both, he couldn’t tell for sure. Lila had betrayed him, but she was one of them now. They could go back to 2019, take a breath, and figure out where to go from there.

That, he was excited about. Sleeping in a bed he could call his own, knowing where his siblings were, being able to sit down and talk to Lila about where they stood.

Yes, it was excitement he felt, not nerves. No one could tell him different.

* * *

Five scuffed his foot on the ground as he walked. He shouldn’t have agreed to let Lila come with them. It was a dumb move. But Diego just wouldn’t let it go and, dammit, he’d had a busy day. Also, and he could not stress this enough, he was recovering from nearly bleeding out a little over week ago, stretching his powers too thin multiple times, and a bout with paradox psychosis.

Oh, and let’s not forget seeing his siblings all die in front of him again.

It was possible he’d give them anything they asked right now just because they were still alive to ask it of him.

He ended up back at the barn staring at the place where his siblings laid dead in their own gore only a few hours before. This had to be some form of masochism, returning to the scene of their most recent demise. The place where they’d been torn to shreds by bullets, dead before they even had a chance to bleed out-

He forced himself to take a stuttering inhale. The air was unusually cold for Dallas. The ground was white except for a few patches where footprints had thinned it enough for grass to poke through. Snow had seeped into his shoes, leaving his socks uncomfortably damp. The barn door was rough and grainy where he gripped it. In the distance, he could hear cows mooing, leaves in the wind, his siblings’ voices.

He took another breath, less stuttered now, just because he could. Let it out. Looked back at the barn.

The barn where Diego had declared his love for everyone except him.

Back in the apocalypse, he’d once read that there are seven types of love.

It stuck with him for some reason. He didn’t even remember why he’d read it in the first place. It’s not the kind of science he’s accustomed to dealing with. It’s all implication and pattern-finding in words and feelings and experiences where he deals with numbers and equations and constants. Qualitative and quantitative. Minds can change. Feelings can too. Numbers do not. Or at least not in the same way.

The science of the mind has always been a mystery to him. That’s no different now than it was in the past. Sure, he can predict behavior to the extent that his job – former job - required. He can understand diagnoses and abnormal behavior and the brain itself as an organ, but the actual human experience, the delicacy that means damaging two people’s brains in the same place can lead to very different changes in personality and experience isn’t something he ever had the time or inclination to investigate more. He had his numbers and that was plenty. That world made sense. That world he could master and control.

Anyway, seven types of love. According to some, at least. Others said four, but seven is powerful. Symbolic. It gives just enough leeway to include specificity but not so much specificity that there are too many distinctions to make sense of.

Besides, he’s always had a soft spot for seven.

So, seven it was.

There’s romantic love, of course, which seems to get the most attention for some reason. That had always baffled him. The other six types are of equal, maybe even greater, importance. Love that’s playful. Love that’s practical. Universal love. Love of friends, of family, and of self.

He can’t help but wonder if anyone will ever feel one for him.

“Five?”

Allison had somehow snuck up and was standing next to him. Only years of practice allowed Five to suppress his startle response. When had Allison gotten so stealthy?

“How long have you been out here?” she continued when Five didn’t acknowledge her.

The sun was much lower in the sky than when he’d sat down with Diego. Huh. Maybe her being able to sneak up on him was less about her ability and more about his exhaustion.

“A little while.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. It was warm, grounding. “Are you okay?”

He was fairly certain she meant “why are you standing here staring at an empty barn like it murdered your family?” but he appreciated the simplified version.

“Fine.” Just like always. “Is everyone ready to go?”

“Getting there. Why don’t you come inside? Sissy made some hot chocolate. We figured drinking it together might be a little less of a traumatic family experience than whatever you want to call that meal with Dad.”

Five snorted. “A light supper.”

“Light,” Allison scoffed. “It was a plate of fruit. We didn’t even eat. I don’t think it would count as hors d'oeuvres. Supper my ass.”

Despite himself, he found he was smiling. God, he’d missed Allison.

“Fine. I don’t suppose she has any coffee lying around-“

He’d pushed off the barn door, only to stumble backwards when Allison didn’t let go of his shoulder.

“Allison?”

In the dimming light of dusk, her mirth had faded into something more serious. “This Lila situation. Is she safe to be around?”

He shrugged. “Probably not. But Diego doesn’t seem conducive to anything other than dragging her with us, so I don’t think we have much choice. And…he’s not altogether wrong. Keep your enemies closer, and all that,” he said with a flourishing hand wave.

Allison hummed. “We’ll keep an eye on her.”

Five gave a short nod. Allison returned it in a way that would have felt patronizing if not for the small smile that accompanied it. Something in his chest felt lighter. Was this…did he feel reassured? When was the last time he’d felt reassured by anything, much less a smile from his sister? Then again, if he had Allison, he probably had Luther. It was a start.

Night had fallen by the time they were ready to go. It was almost déjà vu, them standing in a circle just as they had two weeks ago in the Icarus Theater. Almost. Now, Diego was giving Lila a dopey smile. She returned a shy one of her own before shifting her gaze over to Five, the smile turning sly. He held eye contact for a moment just to make a point before continuing his check. Klaus was fawning over some ridiculous hat. Vanya was grabbing Klaus’s proffered hand with her own tentative smile. Allison was frowning at Diego and Lila while Luther darted a wary gaze between Lila, Allison, and, to his surprise, Five himself.

Yeah, there was no way this was going to go well.

The briefcase flicked open and they were enveloped in a flash of blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title refers to the seven types of love described in a Psychology Today article. That is to say, it is somehow not a reference to the seven Hargreeves, nor a reference specifically to Vanya. I was originally going to call this Storge (familial love) because that’s where lots of my focus is, but I ended up stumbling on this description of other types of love and saw some additional connections to make and explore. Hopefully those are evident to others not just me and I’m not that Buzzfeed Unsolved connection meme (Me: “I’ve connected the Hargreeves siblings and the seven types of love.” Y’all: “You didn’t connect shit.” Me: “I’ve connected them.”)
> 
> I’ll define them in varying chapters. Those definitions will be a combination of paraphrase and direct quotes from the article.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, thank you all SO MUCH for the kudos and absolutely lovely comments! I may not respond to everyone, but know that I love and appreciate all of you. It’s been fun getting back into this type of writing and I’m glad to hear at least the first chapter turned out okay.
> 
> I will admit this chapter got a bit out of hand. Turns out trying to include both introspective character stuff AND events to move the plot forward while also setting up future events really drives a word count up. This was meant to be, like, 4K. Oh well.
> 
> It should be evident from the tags, but as a head’s up, I’m keeping Luther and Allison friends in this fic. I really liked Ray and Allison together and she needs time to grapple with the loss of that relationship while also jumping back into being a mother to Claire. Luther has his own stuff to deal with too. If you like Allison and Luther together, then feel free to see this as pre-relationship. If you don’t, then the perspective I’m writing this from is that they’re close friends and nothing more, so you should be good to go.

* * *

_Philia: Love based on friendship or shared goodwill. Real friends seek to live fuller lives together by relating authentically to each other and teaching each other about the limitations of their beliefs and the defects in their character._

* * *

April 2, 2019.

Luther never been happier to see a date.

He wasn’t alone if the laughter and cheers of his siblings were anything to go by. It echoed through the foyer and across the floors, bringing life to the halls he used to bike room to room in with only the radio as company.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I need a drink,” Klaus said, giddy. “In fact, I need several.”

Diego was already pulling Lila by the hand to follow Klaus and Vanya to the bar and sitting room. Lila was looking around the foyer jaw ever so slightly dropped, though she ended up glancing towards Five before Diego tugged her over to the bar.

She spent far too much time looking at Five for Luther’s taste.

“I should call Claire,” Allison said, though she was watching Lila’s back with suspicion too.

“Have a drink with us first,” Luther said. “It’ll give you some time to settle down after…everything.” And it would give her time to make sure Lila didn’t immediately try to slit Five’s throat or whatever the Commission trained its assassins to do. He felt it best to leave that unspoken.

“Yeah,” she said, shoulders losing some of their tension. “Yeah, that makes sense. Probably don’t want to be calling her with post-time travel nerves.”

She offered a weak smile and a short laugh that matched it. It felt awkward somehow. Forced.

Five had beaten them to the bar and was sipping some concoction that looked radioactive. Luther slumped down on the stool next to him. As much as he wanted to celebrate, he didn’t feel much like drinking. Last time he’d gotten drunk at home had been a disaster. It was hard not to associate drinking here with the desolate emptiness of finding out he’d wasted four years of his life on the moon. And even now, a drink with his siblings would be tainted with melancholy. Mr. Ruby hadn’t picked up the phone when he’d tried to call before they left. What he would’ve said, he wasn’t sure. History had never been his forte – astronomy and orbital dynamics were more his speed – but who didn’t know the events around Kennedy’s assassination? Oswald killed Kennedy; Jack killed Oswald. What happened beyond that, Luther wasn’t sure, and it wasn’t something he was particularly interested in finding out.

Allison put a glass in front of him, but thankfully let him pick his own drink. Once he’d poured as little in as he could get away with, Allison clinked her glass against his and drank.

Not long after, Klaus pulled Vanya near the couches and was dancing with a glass of amber liquid tipping precariously in his grasp. Vanya was giggling into the edge of her own newly replenished glass. Five had stayed at the bar, though now he was leaning against it as he sat facing the room and his margarita glass had been replaced with water Allison had forced into his hand before she’d gone off to call Claire. Lila had stuck by Diego, looking around at the room’s décor with a judgmental eyebrow raised. Which was fair. She’d stopped short when she got to Five’s portrait, staring in disbelief between it and Five himself. Five raised his glass to her with a smirk.

Pogo and Grace had come in at some point, roused by the noise. He was pretty sure he saw tears glistening in Diego’s eyes, though he was talking with Pogo and didn’t want to stare too hard. His brother would no doubt deny it later, and Luther had felt a lump in his own throat just hearing the tap of Pogo’s walking stick on the floor, so he couldn’t exactly throw stones.

Luther was still talking with Pogo a few minutes later when he saw Five leave the room out of the corner of his eye.

“Pogo, I need to,” he said, pointing his thumb in the direction Five went. Vanya had started approaching anyway – after visibly bolstering herself and a push from Klaus – so it was best to give her the time she needed.

“Of course, Master Luther. Check on your brother. I’ll be here when you get back.”

It was far more comforting than Pogo probably intended it to be. Vanya gave him an appreciative smile and small nod.

Luther caught the tail end of Five’s feet going up the stairs. Five had to have heard him following, but did nothing to acknowledge him as he stalked into the bathroom. The shower turned on. Luther sat down against the wall nearby. He'd assumed Five would take military-efficient showers. Wrongly, it turned out. Thinking about it, all he had to go off of was their regimented lives before Five left, then two weeks he’d barely paid attention to him outside of being his spotter. What did he really know about his brother?

When Five finally emerged, he was in pajamas, hair tussled from a rough towel-drying. Without so much as a passing glance at Luther, he made a beeline for his bedroom.

“You don’t have to wait around for me,” he tossed behind him as Luther scrambled to his feet. “Consider your duty as my spotter fulfilled.”

It didn’t feel fulfilled. It felt failed, in fact, but Five didn’t look to be in a mood to discuss that.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Five waved him off with a hum and collapsed face first on his bed. Luther followed him in.

“This still a daddy issues thing?” Five asked, muffled by the pillow his face was smothered in. “Because I really don’t have the energy to deal with that right now.”

“No, it’s- uh…” Why did he feel so wrong-footed here? First in his brief interaction with Allison and now with Five. He’d thought being back in the Academy would make him feel more at ease, but if anything, it was making him more uncomfortable. “Can’t I just check on you?”

Five turned his head so he could see Luther. His flop of hair barely covered a goose egg on his forehead that was already changing from red to purple. Another bruise was forming on his throat. Who knows what was hidden under his pajamas.

“I appreciate the concern, but I just want to get some sleep before the world inevitably falls apart again. Or before Diego’s girlfriend decides she’s sick of him and turns on us. Can I do that? You want to spot me while I sleep?”

Luther heaved a sigh and pulled Five up by the back of his collar. He flailed, fists glowing with blue sparks that sputtered out almost as soon as they started.

“What the hell are you-“

Luther pulled the sheets halfway down and lowered Five back to the bed, then picked up his legs and put them under the sheets.

“Oh,” Five said, now curled on his side. Despite what appeared to be considerable effort, his eyelids were drooping. “I can get under my own blankets.”

“Mhm,” Luther hummed. He was pretty sure Five could not, in fact, have gotten under his own blankets. He was surprised Five had even made it up the stairs. His money had been on the old man passing out on top of the bar.

“Don’t need to make up for trying to kill me,” Five slurred. He sounded like he was already mostly asleep. “I already got us home.”

Luther’s brow furrowed. “You don’t- I’m not being nice to you because I want something from you.”

But Five’s breathing had evened out into sleep.

* * *

Vanya had talked with Pogo as long as she could stomach it. As horrifying as it was that she had killed him, she still couldn’t forgive his years of deceit. They had a lot more to work through, and it would take time.

After Five had disappeared upstairs with Luther on his tail, it hadn’t taken too much longer for everyone to move to their respective rooms. She briefly considered going back to her apartment to sleep, but the thought alone was so exhausting she dismissed it. Turns out the answer to the question “what do you do after you and your family stop two apocalypses and witness a presidential assassination that happened 26 years before you were born?” was sleep.

Klaus had long-since commandeered her room, so she wandered to one of the guest rooms Grace for some reason kept up. A guest room was better anyway. She wanted to be around her family now, bolstered by their acceptance of her powers and the feeling of Diego leaning his head against hers, but the idea of her old bedroom held no appeal. If she was going to be here, she wanted to start fresh. New floor, new room, new you, right?

Sleep came easily, despite it being mid-afternoon when she went to bed. Dawn was barely starting to break when she finally woke, her internal clock still set to get up early to help Sissy with Harlan. The silence that greeted her could only mean the rest the house was still asleep. The room she’d picked let in the morning light. She lay there, listening for the sounds of voices she knew were lost to the past, trying to see if the sun would wash away the grief eating away at her chest. When that failed, she did some breathing exercises from therapy. If this was as good as she was going to feel for now, she may as well get up and see what 2019 had to offer.

The Academy whispered and creaked as she made her way down to the kitchen, keeping her footsteps light so she wouldn’t wake the others, only to pull up short when she found wasn’t the first one there. Lila was fiddling with a coffee maker that was very obviously not cooperating with her.

“Need help?”

Lila didn’t jump despite having had her back turned to Vanya. “If you know how to work it. It’s a temperamental little bugger.”

It was a newer model of machine. Grace must have gotten it sometime in the lead-up to the first apocalypse after Five’s return. For only being around for a week, he’d certainly complained enough about sub-par coffee.

The machine was, thankfully, similar enough to Vanya’s own that it was easy to figure it out. Lila stood next to her fidgeting with her fingernails and surreptitiously observing as Vanya started the machine.

"I'm Vanya, by the way."

"I know who-” Lila stopped and took a breath. “I'm Lila."

Vanya offered a tentative smile, which Lila returned. “Nice to meet you. You know, without being thrown against a barn.”

Lila winced. Shit. Maybe it was too soon to joke. She barely knew this woman. What if she’d offended her? She was just trying to be friendly and now she had-

The coffee machine clicked, then made a sucking sound that meant it was done.

“Would you care to join me?” Lila said, reaching around Vanya to grab the pot. “It might be nice to get to know some of Diego’s siblings besides the gremlin. And outside of throwing them against barns.”

Oh, thank god, she had a sense of humor. “Sure, yeah, I’d like that. Um, we could go upstairs to the sitting room if you want. There are more comfy chairs there.”

“Ah. I'm okay here if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” Vanya said, sitting in the chair across from the one Lila had taken. Steam was still pouring off her coffee, but she raised it to her lips anyway, put it back down when it nearly burned her tongue.

“It's the portrait, isn't it?”

Lila’s cup clunked to the table. “It is so the portrait,” she said, relieved. “It's just so creepy.”

“Try eating meals in front of it for years.”

Lila shook her head. "I'd rather not. How did you lot make it growing up?"

That was a loaded question, wasn’t it?

“I don’t think we really did.”

Ben was dead. Five had disappeared, and he’d given up his childhood well before that on his quest to better his powers. Klaus was an addict by the time most kids were trying out for JV sports. Luther, Diego, and Allison had their own hang-ups. And Vanya…well, they all knew how she had turned out. At best, they had survived growing up so they could spend years dealing with the trauma it caused, and even survival didn’t apply to all of them.

Then again, in the end they had gotten themselves together. Five returned dead-set on saving his family. Luther had recognized that Reginald wasn’t perfection embodied. Diego had said he loved them. Allison thought of others before herself. Klaus was moderately sober. Vanya had a semblance of control over her powers and had finally started to get a sense of who she was both as an individual and within the new family dynamics the apocalypse – apocalypses? – had forced them into.

They all still had their problems. Very obvious problems. Therapists would balk at the sheer magnitude of problems they had. Books about family dysfunction could be written based solely on them - she would know, wouldn’t she?

But everyone had problems, and they were working on theirs. That’s what mattered, right?

She shook herself and looked back at Lila, who was eying the food on the pantry shelf seemingly oblivious to the land mine she’d set off in Vanya’s head. “How did you make it with the Handler?”

Lila paused for a moment, wrapping both hands around her coffee. “About the same.”

They sat in the silence of children who were nothing but disappointments to their parents, of parents who were just as disappointing to their children.

Lila held her cup, half as full as it had been, up to Vanya. "To shitty childhoods and putting them behind us."

Vanya couldn’t help but smile. She’d spent so much of her life stuck in the past. Life with Sissy had been beautiful not just because of Sissy, but because there was only the present. Being back here didn’t mean that had to change. Maybe it was time all of them put their shitty childhoods behind them and move on.

She raised her own cup. "I'll drink to that."

* * *

It took longer than anticipated to have the family meeting Vanya knew was inevitable because, in the least shocking turn of events since Luther and Diego turned Reginald’s funeral into a wrestling match, Five had fallen into a sleep that could best be described as a light coma. When Vanya had gone to wake him for breakfast, he’d responded with a confused mumble then stopped responding at all. That had led to mild panic from several siblings who would later deny it and Grace being dragged in. She almost immediately diagnosed Five with exhaustion that he would recover from as soon as he was able to get enough rest.

Between shifts sitting with Five and shoving soup down his throat whenever he was vaguely conscious, Vanya, Diego, and Allison all had responsibilities they had to step back into as if the time between April 1st and 2nd hadn’t been months – years in Allison’s case – of living a different life.

It turned out being first chair of the city’s orchestra made for a much more in-demand instructor. Vanya had gotten back to her apartment to find her answering machine overwhelmed with requests for lessons. She’d had to reschedule her students for the week, begging off for a family emergency, then spent some time figuring out a new schedule before she headed back to the Academy.

She had returned just in time to hear Diego and Lila deciding they would stay there as well, at least for the time being. That decision had included such classic arguments as “I did not leave the Commission to live in a boiler room like some comic book vigilante!” and “Maybe you shouldn’t be with a comic book vigilante then! I worked hard for that room!” and “I thought you’d want to be closer to your family after you got all ooey gooey about them back in ’63!”

They did agree that picking a bigger room than Diego’s cramped childhood bedroom would be for the best, though, so there was that.

Allison had the biggest adjustment to make, in large part because of the parts of her life that had always left Vanya jealous and longing. She’d spent some time on the phone with her agent, then more time on the phone with Patrick. Of the siblings, Allison was the most torn, needing to reconcile her life over the past two years with her life now while also finding a way to connect the family she had built on her own with the family she had reconnected with. She’d even confided in Vanya that she felt guilty about leaving to see Claire because of some implied promise she’d made to Five. Vanya certainly didn’t envy her any of that.

After three days, they were finally all gathered in the sitting room for a Family Meeting™. The smell of coffee permeated the air, probably from the cup Five was holding like a lifeline from his place on a hilariously overstuffed chair. Klaus had dragged in furniture from other rooms, so there was an eclectic mix of seating options scattered around that would’ve made Reginald balk.

“Okay,” Diego started once they’d all settled in, “I thought it might be a good idea for us to sit down and talk about what happened in 1963. I know we all had…different experiences.” He tossed a look at Allison, then gave a critical look at the cowboy hat Klaus refused to take off. “And that not everyone is happy about Lila being here.” He offered Lila a conciliatory smile, which she returned.

Five scoffed, but otherwise remained uncharacteristically silent.

Vanya actually sort of liked Lila. Since that first morning coffee, they’d had several meals together. She was…different. But so were all of them.

“I want to give us time to talk things through and air our grievances so we can move on.”

No one spoke. Diego clearly hadn’t planned for that alternative. His eyes were flitting between siblings as he shifted foot to foot.

“So, uh,” Diego said, “what are everyone’s grievances?”

Vanya looked at Lila, who gave her a look that roughly translated to “oof.” Vanya returned a “you’re not wrong” look of her own. Across the room, Allison and Five were having what appeared to be a whole silent conversation. Huh. Allison and Five had never been particularly close, certainly not close enough to have their own silent conversation. Then again, Vanya was sharing moments with Lila, who had been with them all of three days, so she supposed it wasn’t too out of the blue for Allison and Five to be able to read each other.

“It’s just,” Allison said, leaning forward from her seat on the couch, “how do we know we can trust her?”

That was enough to open the floodgates.

Luther mirrored her lean. “Yeah, she tried to kill Allison.”

“And Five,” Allison added quickly.

“In my defense,” Lila said, “he murdered my parents.”

“Under orders from _your mother_ ,” Five bristled.

“Oh, and we all know how good you are at following orders Mr. I’ll-Break-My-Contract-and-Time-Travel-When-It-Suits-Me,” Lila shot back.

“He did that to stop the apocalypse and save our lives,” Allison said.

“You’re actually defending him?” Lila sneered. “You have no idea the things he’s done.”

“If I recall, you’re an assassin too,” Allison shot back. “And I don’t know the things you’ve done either.”

Everyone started talking over one another. As much as she didn’t want to fall back into her former role as the timid sister, she didn’t want to participate in a family argument when her powers were based on her emotional stability. Anger and frustration were almost visible in the room. Actually, could she see sound? She hadn’t really explored aspects of her power beyond feeling it.

“Alright, alright, ep, ep, ep, ep,” Klaus said, making little mouth closing gestures with his hands as he stood in the middle of the room. “There are clearly some deeper issues and potential double standards here that need to be worked through.”

“Thank you, Klaus,” Diego said.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Klaus said with a remorseful look. “Listen, your speech in the barn was touching.” Five’s grip on his cup went white-knuckled, but he was too far away to check on. “All that stuff about love and family? Really, my soul _felt_ that.” Klaus clinched his fist dramatically over his chest. “But she did sort of try to kill us, so…”

“My mum- The Handler wanted you dead-”

“Oh, so now that _you_ were following orders, everything is peachy?” Five asked.

“Maybe,” Klaus shouted, cutting off the vicious argument that was inevitably about to break out, then pausing to make sure everyone would stay quiet before continuing in his normal tone. “Maybe we can all agree that killing people under orders is a bad thing and reconcile with the moral and psychological ramifications of that another time? Do either of you plan on killing people under orders again?”

“I said I’m done with killing and I meant it,” Five said.

Lila nodded.

“Okay, the floor is yours again,” Klaus said with an airy gesture to Diego.

“Um, thanks. So, any other grievances we need to air?”

In the second least shocking turn of events since Luther and Diego turned Reginald’s funeral into a wrestling match, there were. It took an hour of back and forth about various bits of their time collective and separate in the 1960s for them to finally start running out of steam.

Vanya half expected pushback when she said she had to leave for a lesson soon. She’d been pleasantly surprised when the response had been an understanding nod from Diego.

“Okay, I think we can wrap up for now-“

“Actually, there’s one more thing we need to talk about,” Allison cut in. “It’ll be quick.”

It took Vanya a minute to realize Allison was looking at her for permission to continue.

“Oh, uh, sure, yeah, I still have some time.”

Allison nodded and appeared to be bracing herself. “I need to go see Claire.”

Vanya hadn’t fully understood why Allison was worried, but it apparently wasn’t unfounded. Five flashed a look of betrayal that quickly shifted to understanding and wilted into resignation.

“I want to stick around to make sure things are okay here, but I need to see her. So badly,” Allison continued, looking mostly at Five. “Patrick has agreed to a visitation arrangement for a few weeks while we figure things out there. I’d like to at least split my time between here and there, maybe even try to move back here, but we need to figure out how that would work with Claire and with my career.”

“Of course, Allison,” Vanya said with a pointed nod. “I’m glad you’re getting to see her and that Patrick is willing to talk.”

“Thank you,” Allison returned with a relieved smile, taking Vanya’s support for what it was, before turning to Five. “Hey.” She waited until Five looked at her. “I’ll be back next month. I’ll call every day. You all will let me know if anything is going on. I don’t care what it is. If one of you stubs a toe, I want to know.”

It was a classic Allison suggestion. Which was to say it was a command she had no need to reinforce with a rumor.

“Sure,” Five said. “Do what you need to do. Claire is family.”

His lips twitched up into what might be considered a smile despite somehow also looking downtrodden.

Diego nodded. “Yeah, we’ll hold down the fort here, right?”

“Can we have movie nights?” Lila asked. “I’ve heard movie nights are a thing.”

Whatever positivity Five had been able to muster soured. “Do what you want,” he said before jumping back upstairs.

Allison looked at the chair where he’d been with something like disappointment. “I need to start making reservations.” Then she was gone too.

“That was weird, right?” Klaus said. “I can’t be the only one who got a weird vibe from that whole interaction.”

It was weird, but there wasn't much to be done about it now. If Five was in a mood, it was probably best not to approach him until he'd cooled down. She'd have to try him later.

“So was that a yes on movie nights or…” Lila said.

Diego shook himself from Allison and Five’s abrupt departures. “Uh, I think…do we still have a TV and VCR somewhere?”

“I can check with Pogo,” Luther said, distracted.

Klaus leaned back in his chair, throwing his legs out to rest on Five’s now vacant seat. “I suppose I can’t say no to a movie night.”

Was it even a Hargreeves family meeting if at least one family member didn’t storm out while the rest of the family pushed on as if it hadn’t happened?

Vanya sighed. “Sure, why not? How about once a week?”

* * *

The underlying awkwardness Luther had felt the first day back persisted, permeating through almost all of his interactions. Now that he’d noticed it, he couldn’t escape it, like that feeling that everyone was staring at you despite that fact that no one was looking. A pause in his conversation about breakfast with Diego. Klaus’s disinterested mhm’s in response to questions. Five…well, Five was back to mostly ignoring him in order to write equations all over everything. Nobody even knew what he was calculating anymore. It was certainly less frantic, though it required no less of his attention it seemed. Allison thought he might just be falling back onto something he knew now that his singular goal had been achieved. Still, even the tantrums – not the Five would ever allow them to be referred to as tantrums – when something got erased had a stilted air to them when Luther was present.

The others didn’t seem to acknowledge that anything felt off. Maybe it was just him. Maybe it was because he’d been here in the Academy for years by himself and they hadn’t. Maybe it had been this awkward around Dad’s funeral and he’d been too ensconced in grief and distracted by his mission to solve Dad’s “murder” to notice.

In the end, it didn’t matter why he felt the way he felt. It only mattered that he felt it, and it was eating away at him, despite how happy he was that everyone was back together. At least for now.

Because Allison was going to California for a month.

What was he going to do when Allison left? She was his best friend. She was his anchor in a lot of ways. Growing up, they had been each other’s confidantes. When either of them got too far into their own heads or if any of the other siblings managed a particularly brutal jab – physical or verbal – he knew he could sneak into her room and metaphorically cry on her shoulder. She knew she could do the same. With everything that they’d been through, he needed an anchor more than ever. After being happily married to a great man who she left behind, maybe she needed an anchor too.

And he couldn’t stop thinking about the mistakes he’d made. Believing in Dad. Locking up Vanya. Rejecting Five in the 60s. Really, just so much of the 60s.

Five had said he had daddy issues. Diego, a year and a lifetime ago, had pointed out how badly he dealt with change.

He had a lot to work through. Maybe it was time to start.

He made a decision.

Finding Allison wasn’t too difficult. She was in her bedroom packing up a few belongings. What was somewhat surprising was that someone was already with her.

“-said we’d keep an eye on her and now I’m taking off,” Allison was saying.

“She’s your daughter, Allison,” Five responded. “I wouldn’t expect any different.”

“Five-“

“Your daughter needs you more than I do.”

Luther could imagine Allison internally debating over what strategy to take to deal with their brother. Her jaw was no doubt set, staring down Five while somehow weaponizing the soft sound of clothes being folded and tucked into bags.

“I don’t think Klaus trusts her either,” Allison finally said.

“Klaus is going through his own shit right now,” Five threw back. “Plus, he’s a sucker for a love story. It’s only a matter of time-”

“I’m serious. Go to him if something seems off. I’m only a phone call away, but…”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, don’t treat me like a child who needs a chaperone. I can handle things alone. I’ve handled things alone for decades.”

“And you don’t have to anymore. Go to Klaus. Call me. You’ll have Luther too.”

A floorboard creaked at just the wrong time. When Luther peeked around the doorway, Five was already staring at him.

“No, I won’t.”

With that, he blinked away. For arguing so hard that he was 58, he certainly had mastered the dramatic flair of a teenage exit.

Luther tried to tamp down the swell of unease that rose in his stomach at the disappointment on Five’s face before he’d disappeared. His head was telling him he should go find Five, explain himself as if Five hadn’t immediately seen through him. That was exactly why he was doing what he was doing, though. He pushed the door open more fully and leaned on the door frame.

Allison dropped a folded shirt into her suitcase, heaving a sigh at Five’s antics. “Hey, Luther.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No, it’s fine. He’s fine. He’s just on edge. Understandably.”

“When isn’t he on edge?”

“Fair.”

“He’s not completely off though.” At Allison’s frown, he continued, “I was coming to find you to ask if you think there’s room on your flight for one more.”

Allison blinked. “Um, maybe?”

“If you don’t mind me being there, of course.”

“Uh…” Allison just looked confused.

Right. He should back up. “I just...I think I need to be away from here for a little while and thought... I don’t want to impose. I can fly out with you then go off and do my own thing. See the sights. Figure some things out. In a different place. I’d go on my own, but after the past year-” _by myself, thinking everyone I loved was dead_ “- it would be nice to know there’s a friend nearby.”

Sometime during his rambling, Allison had shifted from confused to discerning, probably more than she should have with the way he’d stumbled through his explanation. “That makes sense. It’ll be nice to know someone is there. Patrick isn’t the easiest to deal with. Maybe we can set up some regular lunches to check in with one another?”

“That sounds great,” he said with a smile. “What’s your flight? I’ll make a reservation.”

“You may want to make it for two seats,” she said, gesturing at his shoulders. “I’d hate it if you got put in the middle.”

He envisioned a normal flight and what he would look like wedged between two hapless travelers.

“At least we’re not hurting for money,” he said with a wince. She gave him a sympathetic look and her flight information.

He was already thinking about what he might need to pack after he got off the phone with the flight reservations when Allison spoke again.

“Luther?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you’re taking the time. Figuring things out. That’s great.”

He smiled. “Thanks, Allison. Me too.”

* * *

In the week since Allison and Luther left, things had been fairly quiet. Five had sequestered himself away from them for the most part, joining for meals and the occasional family activity. All of them had noticed that Klaus was the only one he allowed in his presence without question, though no one had said anything about it yet. Any overtures Vanya made were soundly rejected, usually with snide remarks about how she would clearly rather be hanging out with Lila.

It was frustrating. She wanted to spend time with Five, but found herself spending more and more time with Lila, especially with Allison gone. It was nice having someone else to talk to. Someone who didn’t necessarily know all her background…who hadn’t excluded her from every childhood group activity.

Lila could be a friend. And Vanya so desperately wanted a friend.

So here she was, waiting by the front door for Lila, who was bouncing downstairs. They were going shopping. Vanya had a concert in a few weeks, and her best suit had been bleached white in a massive show of power that had destroyed the world. Also, she’d left it in 1963. These things happen.

Lila needed new clothes too. She hadn’t come to 2019 with anything other than what she was wearing at the time. She’d made due borrowing from Diego and going to thrift stores, and she would disappear for periods of time, presumably to shop for supplies and to get to know the city. Despite that, the only things Vanya could see Lila collecting were the bare essentials, with no evidence of actually building a closet of her own in the house. It would be nice to give her the chance to get things for the long-term. Make the Academy home.

Lila made it down the stairs and stopped next to Vanya.

“What’s up with him?”

Five was standing in the foyer in front of them staring at a pallet of notebooks big enough to stock a moderately sized office for a year.

“Allison sent him a gift and he doesn’t know what to do.”

“Her gift is…office supplies?”

“He keeps writing on walls and scrap paper and napkins and complaining when we throw things out and he loses parts of his formulas. So,” she nodded to the stacks of notebooks.

One of the packages had been ripped open and Five was holding a notebook. There appeared to be a variety of colors, but the one in Five’s hand was blue. His name was clearly embossed on the cover as a personalized seal, and it was spiral bound at the top so it wouldn’t get in the way of his hand.

“That’s quite thoughtful actually.”

“It really is. He doesn’t know how to deal with it, so he’s been standing there staring at it for,” she looked at her watch, “eight minutes.”

Five pulled himself out of whatever stupor receiving a gift had put him in and scowled at them before blinking away. A second later he re-appeared, put his hand on the pallet and disappeared again this time with his mass of notebooks.

“What a weird little man,” Lila said.

“He has his moments,” Vanya responded. “Ready to go?”

“Sure, one second,” Lila said. She turned towards the stairs and yelled, “Don’t forget movie night tonight, you turd!” then twirled back to Vanya without waiting for a response. “Okay, let’s go.”

Two hours later found them wrapping up at the mall. It hadn’t been a bad trip. Lila had picked out several blouses, a few sweaters, some basic pants, and a cute dungaree dress, which she had grabbed with a “You know, the 60s weren’t too bad for fashion.” She was sitting outside the dressing room Vanya was in, feet casually propped up on a chair she’d stolen from further down the hall of changing stalls.

“I think this is the one I’m going to go with,” Vanya said.

“Well, come on then, let’s see it.”

Vanya opened the door and shuffled out.

Lila gave a wide open-mouthed smile. “I love it! Very dapper!”

“I still need to get it tailored,” Vanya said, blushing.

“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t look dashing now.”

“I mean-“

“Take the compliment. And then let’s get out of here. I think I’m all malled out.”

The mall was a maze and they had ended up on the opposite side to where Lila had parked the car. One good thing about having Lila with her was that Lila had no compunction about telling off the salespeople aggressively approaching from kiosks to sell them who knows what products. Vanya had found herself roped into various deals numerous times before when she couldn’t politely escape. Lila gave a smile that said she would just as soon slit their throats as buy their product and, just like that, they were on their way.

“So,” Lila said once they’d maneuvered into a wider area, “what do you have planned for the rest of the day?”

“I don’t have any more lessons until tomorrow, so I’m gonna hang out at the Academy. I’m supposed to train in a couple of hours.”

“Really? You seemed pretty in control of your power last I saw.”

Vanya shrugged but couldn’t stop a tinge of a smile at the compliment. “Everything is still new. I’ve known about my powers for, like, two months and half of that I had amnesia for, so…we just want to avoid me draining the life out of anyone with an energy tentacle, you know?”

Lila’s eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. “Energy tentacle?”

“You don’t know? I thought you knew all our powers.”

“Oh, I know your powers,” she said with an air of confidence. “Energy tentacle wasn’t listed verbatim in the file, if you believe it.”

“Oh, right, yeah that would be a weird official name. I guess it was, like, siphoning energy?”

“Huh, so you just drain the life out of people?”

“I mean, it was- it was only the once, and I was overloaded after a power build-up and really angry and I guess my powers are linked to my emotions more than the others’ are, so….” Her face was hot, less with embarrassment and more shame. She’d nearly killed her brothers. That was one aspect of her powers she never wanted to touch again.

“Right. Remind me not to make you angry. Though I suppose I don’t have much room to criticize.”

“How do your powers work?” Vanya asked, adjusting shopping bags as they passed into the food court. “Shouldn’t you know all ours if you’re using them yourself?”

“That’s a good question. I mostly just…sense what powers are available. Pick and choose, you know? Use whatever seems fit for the moment. Ooooh, pretzels! Can we get pretzels before we go?”

Vanya feigned thinking before giving a decisive nod. “Sure, let’s live a little.”

Lila beamed and skipped over to the pretzel booth to order something no doubt devastatingly unhealthy for both of them.

As hard as it was to think about her mistakes, it was exhilarating to talk to someone about powers. Her siblings had always had each other, but she’d never been able to before. This was her first real taste.

She was so excited about the talk that she didn’t even notice that Lila had never fully answered her question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep Five Hydrated and Well-Rested 2021, am I right? Also, spiral notebooks with the binding at the top are THE BEST.
> 
> Luther and Vanya were a bit harder to pin down mindset-wise, plus lots of this is getting things set up for later. But here we are, another chapter down! Next chapter is a bit montage-y, then we get to the scene I wrote back in September. Yay!
> 
> Speaking of future stuff, I have at least one scene that is about 90% complete but doesn’t fit in the chapter it was intended to be in anymore. I may make a Bonus Scenes fic and land any of those scenes there. Or they may never see the light of day. Who knows! Life is a mystery!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! Unintentional, but what better day for an update on this story! Love to all of you, dear readers! Your kudos and comments continue to bring me joy :D 
> 
> Also, please do not expect chapters to always be this long. Maybe other chapters will balloon too once I give them more attention, but for now they’re not, so don’t be too upset. In my defense, this chapter covers a month’s worth of time and has three perspectives instead of two. It was a lot to get through so that we can get some action next chapter.

__

* * *

_Ludus: Playful, uncommitted love; casual, undemanding, and uncomplicated, though can be long-lasting; may be problematic when mistaken for eros, as it tends to be more compatible with philia._

* * *

Exactly 12 hours after Allison and Luther left, Klaus initiated a plan he’d tentatively named Operation Philadelphia. The name had taken some workshopping, but Operation Befriend Five was too commonplace and where he’d landed had been truly inspired, if he did say so himself. Philadelphia: The City of Brotherly Love.

He’d mentally congratulated himself on his naming success, then turned to the side only to remember there was no one to share his victory with. His chest momentarily became a vacuum. He squinted up towards the ceiling light until his eyes watered from that instead of the swelling feeling compressing his lungs. No time for pesky things like grief. Not when there was a mission to initiate.

A part of him whispered that he was lonely, that he was searching for an outlet, that Five wouldn’t send him sympathetic looks or expect him to be cheery and flippant every second of every day so maybe Klaus could finally relax and deal with the fact that Ben-

He shushed that part of him. He wasn’t doing this because of anything to do with Ben. That would be dumb. No, he was doing this because he’d overheard Diego and Vanya gossiping about how Five had been keeping to himself. And, wouldn’t you know it, Klaus had also been keeping to himself! If Klaus could break down Five’s many steel-reinforced layers, they could keep to themselves together. Two brothers, dealing with their time travel-related trauma. Like brothers do.

His first task in the operation had been to find the little scamp. After no luck checking Five's bedroom and the sitting room, he struck gold in what had now become the TV room. The TV was off, and Five had set himself up on the couch with whatever it was he spent his time doing.

“Hey, Fivey?”

“Klaus?” Five said. His hair fell into his face as he looked up. He pushed it back with an annoyed huff.

“Do you mind if I read in here with you? I promise I won’t mess with your vibe or whatever.”

Klaus held up a book – one of Ben’s old books actually - and shook back and forth it a few times as if the fact that he had a book alone proved he was, in fact, going to read with no ulterior motives.

Five narrowed his eyes. “Did Allison tell you to talk to me?”

Well, now, that was an interesting question, especially after the weirdness between Five and Allison at their family meeting. Klaus had made sure to keep himself away from people before and since, so he hadn’t had the chance to further explore said weirdness. Apparently, no one else had either.

“Why would Allison want me to talk to you?” he asked, head cocked to the side.

“No reason,” Five said, a little too fast before gesturing at the other end of the couch.

It seemed like there was probably a reason. Five didn’t ask random questions. Whatever it was, he certainly wasn’t going to push it. Better to distract so Five didn’t obsess over it. Five was an expert at obsessing.

Klaus plopped down where Five had gestured. “What happened to your forehead? I never asked before.”

The bruise had healed surprisingly quickly, but it had been pretty nasty when Klaus was serving his time on Five Watch and his brother was a pale conked out mess.

“Thought you weren’t going to mess with my vibe,” Five said, brushing his fingers over the spot where the bruise had been.

“Just a friendly question before we settle in.”

“I was already settled in,” Five said under his breath, but made a point of giving Klaus his attention. “Our guest doesn’t have as much respect for kitchenware as she should. I spent almost 45 years in an apocalypse and even I know better than to toss well-seasoned cast iron around like a heathen.”

“Ah.” That…still didn’t answer his question, but Klaus wasn’t particularly fond of the picture it painted. Perhaps it would be prudent to make sure Five and Lila didn’t interact in the kitchen. If only for the sake of Grace’s cast iron.

“Settled?” Five said.

“Yep!”

Klaus nestled into a blanket on the opposite side of the couch and opened his book. First mission: success.

* * *

**Movie Night Week 1: Rocky**

“We really let Diego pick the movie for the inaugural Hargreeves Family Movie Night. We evaluated our options and we said ‘yes, this is a good idea.’ We allowed this to happen.”

Five rolled his eyes. “We get it, Klaus. You don’t like _Rocky_.”

Klaus flopped onto the couch. “I cannot believe I’m going to watch a Stallone movie.”

“ _Rocky_ is a classic!” Diego said. “And Lila hasn’t seen it.”

“I’m sure Lila hasn’t seen a lot of things,” Klaus said. “And that may be for the better.”

Vanya sat down in the overstuffed chair that had made its way to the TV room. “It’s a great movie.”

“Et tu, Vanya?”

Diego dropped a bowl of popcorn on the table. “Watch the damn movie, Klaus.”

Klaus grabbed the popcorn and moved to the floor where he’d piled a bunch of pillows. Diego and Lila claimed the side of the couch with the best view. Five sat on the opposite end. Lila flicked him in the hip with her toes until he blinked to the floor next to Klaus.

No one said anything more, but Diego noticed that, long after Klaus fell asleep next to him, Five was still watching with rapt attention.

* * *

Lila had never had friends before. Now that she thought about it, it was possible that was sad. But she’d had her mother and her training and the Commission members her mother had her associate with to build up her social skills, and that had always felt like it was enough.

Now that she’d been with the Hargreeves for a couple of weeks, it was apparent her experience before was perhaps not as comprehensive as she’d thought.

For instance, dinner had never been much of a formal occasion. She ate meals with her mother – _the Handler_ , her brain corrected – but it wasn’t A Thing.

Now, dinner was one of the few times the remaining occupants of the house reliably sat down together. Even Five showed up and participated. Sometimes he even seemed to enjoy it.

This was not one of those times.

“So, Five,” Diego said, once they all had food in front of them. “What do you spend all day writing about in those notebooks Allison got you?”

The gremlin did spend an inordinate amount of time scribbling in his notebooks. He’d been doing math for something like five decades now, right? You’d think he’d get tired of it. Then again, after seeing some of the pencil pushers at the Commission, Lila supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. They took the whole “make your hobby your career” thing a bit too seriously for her taste, and Five was exceptionally single-minded when it came to particular aspects of his life. She didn’t need a Commission file to see that.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Five said.

“Aw, come on,” Diego replied innocently. “I can always steal them.”

Five glared at Diego, who grinned back with a mouth full of food

“Oh man,” Klaus laughed, “remember when you stole Allison’s diary when we were 9?”

“Uh, no?” Diego said with a confused frown.

Klaus pointed his fork at Diego. “That’s because she rumored you to forget it existed and to go get donuts for all of us. Do you really want to see what Five would do?”

“I would die for you,” Five said, methodically slicing his dinner into bite-size chunks, “but if you touch my stuff, I will impale you with a mop handle.”

Diego looked honest-to-God startled. “I think that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Is this what having siblings is like?” Lila asked.

Five took a bite of his chicken and sent her a menacing smile. She batted her eyes back at him with a saccharine smile of her own.

Conversation turned to safer topics for a while. They’d almost made it through the whole meal when Vanya turned to Lila.

“I’m going to the dry cleaner tomorrow and I think one of the sweaters you got was dry clean only. I can take it with me and drop it off if you want.”

“Sweaters?” Diego asked. “I don’t remember seeing any new clothes.”

Lila internally winced. Bless her, but why did Vanya have to be so damn thoughtful? They had been so close to being done for the day. So bloody close.

“Really?” Vanya said. “We got a few bags worth.”

“You barely have anything in your closet,” Diego said, eying Lila. “Definitely nothing new.”

“Well then I guess you’re not observant enough,” she responded. “I put some of them in the laundry and took that sweater to the dry cleaner. Sorry, Vanya, I didn’t realize any of yours were dry clean too. I would have offered to take them-”

“Oh, it’s not a problem,” Vanya said, shaking her head.

“Which one?” Five asked.

“Pardon?”

“Which dry cleaner?” Five said. It was casual. Too casual. Clever little bugger. Everything was a game with him, just like it had been with her mother – _THE HANDLER_ , her brain yelled.

“Why does it matter?” she replied, lightly. “You have strong feelings about dry cleaning services, little man?”

Five shrugged. “Just curious is all. You’re out and about a lot.”

“Am I?” Lila said.

“Are you?” Diego said, brow creased.

“Maybe you’re a homebody who doesn’t know how often real people go out,” she pointed at Five. “And you,” she continued, throwing a scathing look at Diego, “I didn’t realize I was supposed to wait around the house like a sailor’s wife. Is there a particular balcony you’d prefer me to stand on while I await your return? Would you like me to collect my tears in a bottle so you can see how much I missed you while you were gone?”

“Did- did people do that?” Diego asked, eyes wide.

“How should I know?” The table rattled as she dropped her hands next to her plate.

“I mean, of the two of us, you’re the time traveler, so…”

“Okay!” Klaus interrupted. “As nice as it is to discuss comings and goings, conscientiousness towards the cleaning instructions of our garments, and odd potential historical practices, is anyone for dessert?”

“That sounds great,” Vanya said, far too quickly to feign casualness. “I’ll tell Mom.”

Five continued to eye Lila suspiciously, but didn’t push any further. She certainly wasn’t going to look the gift horse in the mouth.

She would, however, forever appreciate that she was saved from interrogation at the hands of world-class Commission Agent Number Five Hargreeves by homemade flan.

* * *

Things had been awkward the previous night with Lila, and Diego didn’t like it. He hadn’t been trying to push. Was it too much to wonder where she went? Did that cross some line he wasn’t aware of? He didn’t think he was being overbearing, but, with their upbringing, it was hard to tell on the best of days.

So, the next morning, he approached her after breakfast.

“I have the day off from Al’s and need to run some errands. Wanna come with me?”

"Errands,” she repeated, unimpressed. “That's not your most romantic proposal."

"Come on, it’ll be fun. I can show you the city and we can check some things off our to-do list."

“You sure know how to woo a girl,” she said.

“Hell yeah I do.” He leaned close to her. She draped her arms around his neck. “What do you say?” he whispered, his face inches from hers, lips lined up, gazing deeply into her eyes. “Will you come buy drain cleaner with me? The sink is a mess.”

Lila snorted and ducked her head down onto his shoulder. He could feel her laughing against him. It was a relief after the tension of the night before.

When she pulled back up, she gave him a quick peck on the lips. “With stakes that high, I can’t very well let you go on your own, can I?”

The first stop was easy enough, dropping off a couple of bills at the post office. They’d driven by Griddy’s, or what was left of it, and he told Lila about how he and his siblings used to escape the Academy at night and eat donuts until they were sick.

“Didn’t Five murder a bunch of Commission agents there?”

Diego sighed. “That too.”

Next was picking up some papers from the law firm dealing with Reginald’s estate. Everything was mostly taken care of – Reginald was a planner, Diego had to give him that – but there were still some formalities, and Allison insisted on having hard copies of all the documents on file.

That took them by a park. It was a cute little spot with a walking trail around a small lake. Diego pulled over on a whim.

“Let’s go for a walk. I used to patrol here. You know, wait for criminals and stop them from attacking innocent citizens.”

“You make it sound so appealing,” she said, snaking an arm around one of his elbows. “Sure, let’s stroll through your crime-ridden park. Maybe someone will even try to mug us. I could use a good fight.”

Fortunately – or unfortunately if Lila’s disappointed expression was any indication - no one tried to mug them. They’d made it most of the way around the trail when they came across a crowd gathered around what turned out to be a couple of musicians. They’d just started playing a waltz.

“You know the paso doble. You get waltzing lessons growing up, too?” he asked, holding his hand out in invitation.

“I did. You want to waltz in the middle of a park?” she responded, eyebrows pinched upwards like he’d proposed they open a cat café together.

“Sure, why not? Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing I’ve seen here.”

“Charming,” she replied, but took his hand.

They danced through the whole piece. Some of the bystanders shifted attention to them, but Diego didn’t feel anyone’s gaze but Lila’s. He spun her. She laughed, then spun him right back.

The song wrapped up to scattered applause. Lila stepped back but kept holding his hand, sticking close so they were entwined from fingers to elbow. As they headed back to the car, the musicians started playing something familiar. He didn’t recognize much classical music, but anyone who spent time with Vanya growing up heard at least a few well-known pieces. Still, he couldn’t quite put his finger on what this one was.

After that was grocery shopping and picking up the drain cleaner. He made sure to buy marshmallows for Five, Klaus’s favorite brand of chips, and the fancy popcorn Vanya liked having around. Lila picked out some pancake mix and syrup as if Grace didn’t make homemade pancakes at least once a week.

The ride home was quiet. He hated to break the contentment, but there was something that had been nagging at him since the night before. Once they’d gotten up to bed, she had pretended like Klaus hadn’t had to deescalate what easily could have turned into a standoff between the him, Lila, and Five. Not that he was dying to pick an argument, but he had to admit he was curious as to where she was spending her time. She never mentioned going anywhere when he asked her about her day and had seemed inordinately defensive when Five pressed her, though maybe that was a natural reaction to Five. Honestly, that was probably the most reasonable response to have to Five these days. Or any days.

“Hey, so, you’ve been out and about quite a bit?” He tried to keep it casual. Based on the way Lila turned to him with suspicion, he’d failed miserably.

“I’ve been around. Learning the city.”

“Hmm. I’m surprised you haven’t seen any of the places we went today.”

“Maybe I have and I just didn’t want to interrupt your adorable stories of vomiting with your siblings and beating criminals.”

Diego frowned. That was a crass description of the bits of his childhood and young adulthood that he’d shared.

Lila rubbed at one of her temples. “I didn’t mean it like that. I… don’t have cute childhood stories to share, and my defense is to be dismissive.”

“So that’s a Commission thing then, not just Five,” he joked.

Lila bristled. “Do _not_ compare me to him.”

Diego held his fingers up from the steering wheel in surrender. “Still, surprised you haven’t seen some of these places.”

“I’m sure lots of things surprise you, Diego.”

She turned to stare out the window again. The rest of the ride back was silent tension broken only by the staticky music on the radio.

As soon as the car stopped, she tried to jump out. He caught her arm before she could.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to pry. I just wonder where you go all the time.”

“I go out, walk around. I don’t always register everything about where I am.”

He couldn’t stop a judgmental eyebrow raise. “You’re a trained assassin who doesn’t pay attention to her surroundings?”

“Or maybe the places we went are farther away than I ever cared to walk. Or I walk the same path, stake out the same positions like a good little assassin.”

“Lila, I’m not trying to- I wanted this to make up for yesterday, not make things worse.”

Lila deflated. “I’m sorry too. I’ve never had to answer to anyone but the Handler. My ideas around why people might want to know where I’ve been are…skewed.”

“Understandable.”

There was more to talk about, but Lila was clearly uncomfortable and they had frozen goods in the grocery bags. Another discussion for another time.

Lila did help get the groceries in at least, but left him to put them away by himself. He couldn’t blame her. He loved her, but spending so much time with one person was…well, it was a lot. Sometimes, they needed some space.

Blue light flashed at the counter, and Five walked around Diego to get to the refrigerator. Diego kept pulling things out of bags.

“Errands went well?” Five asked.

“Well enough. Got everything done.”

“Good.”

They lapsed into silence, but it was companionable. Diego was putting a couple of bags of marshmallows in their designated place on the shelf when he heard Five stop moving.

“Why’d you get those?” his brother asked.

“Saw the last bag in the trash. Figured I’d go ahead and grab some more since I was going to the store anyway.”

God, why did he feel like a kid waiting for his teacher to appraise him? It was the brand Five preferred – he knew because he’d doubled checked before he wrote it on the list. Mini, since they were easier to pile on sandwiches.

“Hm,” Five finally hummed. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

He’s sure he saw a twitch of a smile followed by a tinge of – was that confusion? - but Five quickly schooled his expression and disappeared again.

That, for some reason, triggered a memory. The song that had been playing at the park.

It was Danse Macabre.

* * *

**Movie Night Week 2: Singing in the Rain**

“Five, do you have any movie preferences?” Vanya asked.

“It’s your pick,” Five responded, barely looking up from his notes. “And I’m going to be in and out. Watch whatever you want.”

Diego huffed. “What the hell do you have to do that you can’t sit down with us for movie night?”

“It’s actually something called none of your damn business,” Five said with a humorless smile.

Klaus sat down on the pillows that he had once again piled on the floor. “Don’t be such a spoilsport. We finally got surround sound put in! It’ll be like you’re actually singing in the rain!”

“How thrilling,” Five deadpanned. “I’ll be in and out.”

They started the movie. True to his word, Five came in a few times and leaned against the back of Vanya’s chair, which Vanya seemed inordinately pleased about. He stayed noticeably far away from Diego and Lila and disappeared well before the end of the movie.

Diego did take heart that Five was eating a freshly made fluffernutter during one of his drop-ins.

* * *

It was weird, being out doing normal couple things. Or at least she assumed them to be normal couple things. There were no grand romantic gestures. No sappy speeches in the rain. No rooms full of expensive flowers. Which made sense because it was a normal day – and also not raining.

It was only that…Lila had never gotten to the “spend a normal day with a significant other” part of a relationship, so she was flying blind. The whole grocery shopping experience had been disorienting because, aside from the dance in the park, it was what she would normally have done only with another person present. She’d thought maybe it was a fluke, but today Diego had come home from a run and asked if she wanted to go grab a coffee with him since he had some time before work.

So now here they were, sitting in a coffee shop drinking overly expensive, obscenely complicated coffee. Diego had joked about bringing some sweetened monstrosity back to Five to see how he’d react. He had bet Five would go Tasmanian Devil crazy. Lila had snickered, but her money was on Five passive aggressively drinking the whole thing while making uncomfortable eye contact, then getting revenge when Diego least expected it.

After that, they debated a couple of other mundane things, all the while knocking their feet together under the table. She could feel herself smiling, but deep in her chest couldn’t shake the feeling that this was wrong. Like it wasn’t for her. What was the point if you weren’t breaking your significant other out of a mental institution or burying good-hearted men who ended up as collateral damage in a pointless game of cat-and-mouse orchestrated by a sadistic woman who-

Anyway, the normality of it all was probably good, but that didn’t stop her from missing the excitement. Longing for the drama, the back-and-forth of figuring each other out with a timer counting down in the background.

Diego walked her back to the Academy like they were high schoolers on a date before he headed off to his shift.

They hadn’t gotten a coffee to test their theory about Five, which was good because she didn’t want to have to deal with him. The more time she spent in the Academy, the more she saw him as a person rather than an assassin. It created a dissonance her mind couldn’t fully comprehend. Even if it was on someone else’s orders, he was still a large part of the reason why she’d been raised by the Handler. Sure, he’d also been manipulated by the woman, picked up when he was at a weak point and re-shaped into a killer. They had that in common.

It meant very little when he showed no remorse for his actions.

And then there was the fact that Diego had jumped in front of a storm of bullets so the little shit stain could make it to the farmhouse. She very purposefully avoided thinking about how her stomach had swooped when she’d seen him step out and throw his arms up as a smaller figure stumbled away.

She had no such compunction thinking about how Five had run off leaving his brother behind. It was possible Five had had more faith in Diego and his abilities than she did. More likely, he’d been in shock and acted without thinking. As focused as she’d been on Diego, she’d glanced over at exactly the right time to see Five turn as he ran. In all their interactions, before or since, that was the only time she’d seen fear from him. He looked at Diego like he thought he’d never see him again.

Their relationship baffled her. Diego and Five got on about as well as two cats learning how to occupy the same territory. Yet Diego had practically beamed when he saw Five eating those stupid marshmallows he bought. And that morning, Five had found and returned one of the knives Diego had been searching far and wide for. Sure, his response to Diego thanking him was “it’s not a big deal, don’t freak out about it,” but that didn’t mesh with the effort he had to have put in to search the places Diego might have missed or couldn’t get to.

It made no sense. Because Five was a prepubescent piece of shit who didn’t give a rat’s ass about, much less show kindness to, anyone.

In her periphery, she caught movement in the sitting room. By habit, she kept her movements light, slinking behind the wall near the doorway, close enough so she could peek in yet far enough away that anyone in the room wouldn’t be able to see her.

Klaus was sitting cross-legged knitting while Five sat across the couch from him reading.

And there was another brotherly pair that threw her for a loop. Based on Klaus’s file, she’d thought them one of the least likely pairs to get along. Klaus read as the dog to Five’s cat. That hadn’t changed when she’d met the man in person. Yet, more often than not, the times she saw him, he was with or in the vicinity of Five, which was honestly a bit annoying in terms of trying to scout out his behaviors to forge a connection with him. Klaus was always polite with her, joked at the right times, seemed friendly enough, but never initiated contact and never hung out with her one-on-one.

Klaus held up his creation and, without warning, hurled it at Five’s head. It smacked into his temple with a fabric-y thud and fell to the couch.

“What the hell, Klaus?”

“I finished one!”

“Congratulations. It’s not confetti. You don’t need to throw it in celebration.”

“Try it on!”

Five’s brow furrowed. “It’s…”

“A mitten! Try it on! Try it on!” he chanted, pumping his fists with each utterance.

Five sighed, but appeased his brother, giving his now mittened hand an exaggerated twist so Klaus could see.

Klaus clapped his hands in delight. “Perfect! I love that look for you.”

“You love the mitten look for me,” Five said with no inflection.

“Um, yes,” Klaus said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “That is a unique hand-crafted artisanal mitten, and it looks amazing on you.”

“Artisanal is probably a bit much,” Five muttered, even as he continued brushing his fingers over the material.

Klaus gasped, putting a dramatic hand to his chest. “That mitten is a gift to mankind. You are blessed to have that yarn touching your skin.”

Five rolled his eyes, but a fond smile had broken across his face. He inspected the mitten, appearing to be searching for blemishes, then took it off, smoothed it out, and tossed it back to Klaus.

“It’s good. Well made.”

“Thank you,” Klaus grinned. “Wait til you see the other one.”

Five was looking down, beyond Lila’s line of sight. “That’s a different color of yarn. It’s different yarn altogether. Is it even the same material?”

“Who said pairs had to match? Don’t let society trap you in a box, Fivey. Live a little!”

“With mismatched mittens,” Five said, in his are-you-sure-that’s-the-dumb-thing-you-want-to-go-with tone.

“Mismatched is a construct society has forced on us. Free your mind.”

“God, why did it have to be you who spent the longest in the 60s? Make your damn mitten.”

With that, they both went back to their respective work.

And there it was again. That sense that Five was a person. With feelings.

She shook herself. No. Number Five was a selfish prick who didn’t care about how his actions affected anyone but his chosen circle. Raised by the same man who had hurt Diego then molded by the Handler to be nothing but a killer. He would as soon murder an innocent family as sit here with his brother. Even if he had moments of humanity, she couldn’t forget that one of her earliest memories was her parents’ pleas suddenly silenced by two gunshots.

She let anger and resentment bubble up again, comforted by their familiar presence.

Both Five and Klaus were distracted. Diego would be gone for a few hours, and Vanya was teaching. She felt around her pants until she found the key in her back pocket. Perfect. With one last glance at the brothers in the living room, she left again.

* * *

**Movie Night Week 3: Romeo + Juliet**

Diego and Lila snuggled together at what had become their corner of the couch. Vanya sat in the oversized chair covered in a blanket. Klaus, as usual, dropped down on the floor with popcorn.

Halfway through the movie, Diego threw a pillow at Klaus. “This has got to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh hush. I watched your stupid sports movie-“

“Sports mov- It won Oscars, Klaus!”

“-so you can deal with Leo and Claire.”

“Best Picture. Best Director. It was nominated in all the acting categories.”

“Your taste is appalling. I don’t know why Lila puts up with you.”

Five never made an appearance.

* * *

It was a pleasant enough day, so Diego had made the executive decision to move training outside to the courtyard. Besides, it gave them more room to stretch their proverbial wings.

Vanya’s control was getting better every day. It was hard not to smile when she did something and genuine joy broke out on her face. In the beginning, she would look for approval before responding, like a child searching out reactions to decide how they should react themselves. Even when she’d helped Harlan at the barn, her first instinct had been to seek out her siblings after her success, asking without words if that was enough. Now, she was beginning to give herself the validation she’d sought from others. It was a work in progress, but Diego was proud of her.

Lila had spent the session working to mimic Diego’s power. He’d started out next to her, but they eventually progressed to hurling projectiles at one another to deflect. They were having fun, laughing, tossing in a quip or a tease every now and again. Was it your typical relationship activity? Maybe not. But what partnership didn’t want a little added danger, right?

They’d sped up to the point where he was barely processing what they what they were doing, acting and reacting solely on instinct. Lila threw a knife at his head with a big grin on her face. Ha, as if that would pose a challenge after stopping a wave of bullets. With a teasing scoff and a flick of his wrist, the knife ended up embedded in the wall behind him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

Five was standing at the door. Jesus, he was livid. Even from several feet away, Diego could tell Five was trembling, as if his teenage body could barely contain the anger within it. Diego hadn’t seen him this worked up since the day they’d found Elliot’s body and Five had given them a deadline to meet in that Dallas alley. The day Diego had ended up at the Commission.

“Training,” Diego said, and somehow made it sound like a challenge. “What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re teaching a trained assassin how to control the trajectory of knives using your head as a target,” he gritted out through his teeth.

Vanya tugged on Lila’s arm. “Let’s go inside. Grab some lunch.”

“I don’t need anyone to defend me,” Lila said, not breaking eye contact with Five.

“I know, but let’s let the boys talk.”

“Yes, let the grown-ups talk,” Five said as Lila passed.

She pulled a condescending smile and pinched his cheek as she walked by. “That went so well for you last time.”

Five clenched his jaw so tightly it looked like it would break.

Once Lila had let Vanya pull her inside, Diego stomped closer to Five.

“What the hell was that?” Diego asked. He wasn’t sure if he was talking about the fit Five had thrown when he first appeared or the fact that Lila pinched his cheek without consequence.

“You’re asking me that? After what I just saw? Sure, yeah okay,” Five said, throwing his arms in the air, “by all means, help your girlfriend refine a skill that will make her even more deadly. How could that possibly go wrong?”

“We’re just having some fun, Five. She says she’s done with all that shit.”

“Uh huh. As we all know, Commission agents never lie.”

“She’s not a Commission agent anymore!”

“But she was still raised by the Handler,” Five all but yelled. “I know you didn’t have that much experience with her, but surely even you aren’t oblivious enough to miss how the Handler works. Everything is – was - a game to her, and she twists and manipulates until she gets,” he closed his eyes, fists clenched, “ _got_ what she wanted. If you’re not ten steps ahead, you’re already behind. That’s who raised and trained Lila. Every time I look at her, all I see is her mother, and yet for some reason, I have to keep reminding you that she came into your life to use you. You really trust Lila at her word?”

Diego blinked. “I- Y-yes, of course. Of course I do.”

Goddammit, his hesitance was too obvious. Anyone would have been able to hear it, much less Five who seemed to hone in on every little potential weakness in anyone around him.

Five gaped. “I honestly don’t know if I’m relieved or concerned. You love her, but you don’t trust her. You know that isn’t a healthy dynamic, right?”

“What do you know?” Diego bristled. “The only relationship you’ve been in was with a mannequin.”

Five visibly bit his tongue. A stab of ugly pride surged through him. Five wasn’t the only one who knew how to pick at weaknesses.

“And what does it say about you,” Five finally said, eyes flashing, “that I had a healthier relationship with Delores than you do with Lila?”

_Probably quite a bit about your mental health_ , Diego thought. Even in the middle of an argument, he knew better than to vocalize that particular insight.

“Thought you’d be happier about it. It’s not like you’re throwing around trust either.”

“Well, I’m not in a relationship with her, am I?”

“Not just talking about her. Of the two of us, who has passed out because they didn’t trust their siblings enough to tell them about an injury?”

“Okay, first off, stop deflecting,” Five started before scrunching his face in a way that screamed I’m-about-to-be-deflected. “And secondly, I’d been alone for 45 years, the tail end of which I spent working for an organization under a woman who was very clearly trying to manipulate me. What’s your excuse?”

They were in each other’s faces by this point, inches away from one another as they slung their arguments back and forth.

“A childhood with a father who spent all his time manipulating his children.”

“We were all there,” Five scoffed. “You’re not special. I remember what that was like.”

“Do you?” he shot back. “Because I remember you leaving when we were 13 and, like you just said, it’s been 45 years on your end.”

“And over a decade for you.” Five poked Diego’s chest. “Ever think about, I don’t know, working through your issues in a way that doesn’t involve violently apprehending criminals or trying to save doomed political figures?”

“You ever think about working through yours in a way that doesn’t involve assassinating innocent people and pushing away everyone close to you? Hell, half the time, I don’t know why you bothered coming back.”

Five opened his mouth then stopped, closed it again. He stared at Diego hard, working his jaw, before taking a step back.

“Alright then,” he said, nodding slowly, as if he hadn’t been fully invested in their fight not two seconds before.

And then he walked away. Didn’t even have the courtesy to slam the door behind him. By the time Diego gathered his senses enough to follow, Five had already disappeared back upstairs. Vanya offered him a worried smile and a small shake of the head from where she sat with Lila. At least she didn’t know what was going on with their brother either. They could all be in the dark together.

Typical. When did the Umbrella Academy ever have a grasp of what was going on around them until it blew up in their faces?

* * *

Five hadn’t said much, but it was clear the argument with Diego was weighing on him. It didn’t help that Lila had infiltrated most places in the Academy and had befriended Vanya, something Five seemed to take as a personal affront as well.

Luckily, he still tolerated Klaus, which meant Operation Philadelphia was still on track. Klaus had already worked up to laying his socked feet in Five’s lap. Well, less in his lap and more barely touching his leg, but progress was progress! The only time he’d tried for the lap, Five had shoved his feet with enough force that Klaus had nearly toppled off the couch. Klaus had retreated to slowly inching his feet closer until eventually they were touching Five without being on top of him. Five’s eyes had swiveled down to them and narrowed into slits, but he allowed the contact. So progress!

At present, Five was scribbling away in one of the notebooks. Klaus was almost done with his second mitten, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d felt Ben’s absence more keenly than usual this morning for no reason he could pinpoint, which made the experience all the more frustrating. This time, it had come with a wave of longing for old habits that needed to stay broken. He’d needed contact, so he’d plonked down with Five and shoved his feet against his thigh. It still didn’t feel like enough.

He knew what he wanted to do.

He was going in.

He scooted across the couch and laid his head on Five’s shoulder.

Five tensed. It didn’t seem like an “I don’t want this” tense though. More of a “This hasn’t happened to me in several decades, what do I do?” tense. One of the good things about Five was that he didn’t mince words. If he didn’t want Klaus near him, he’d tell him to scram. Or push him off the couch. Or stab him with a pen. Or somehow weaponize a notebook. He hadn’t done any of those things yet, which boded well. Still, Klaus could feel Five’s rabbit-fast heartbeat, and his grip on his book was tighter than it was before.

But Klaus was committed now. His head was not leaving his brother’s shoulder unless it was forcibly removed.

Or, you know, if the bones started hurting his ear. Christ on a cracker, was the kid’s shoulder an actual skeleton? Like, he had existent flesh, right?

“What are you doing?” Five asked after it became apparent Klaus would not be moving.

“Leaning my head on your shoulder,” Klaus said. “Just go with it, old man.”

Five remained noticeably tense, if less so than earlier. Klaus’s ear continued to protest the bony shoulder it was laid upon.

Neither Klaus nor Five were going to back down.

It was the possibly the oddest game of chicken he’d had ever taken part in.

Five carefully turned the page of his book. It was then that Klaus realized his error. He hadn’t brought entertainment. His knitting was on the other side of the couch, which wasn’t conducive to his new life attached to Five’s shoulder. He’d actually gotten pretty good at meditating, but he’d already done that today and he didn’t want to do it again. There was only so much meditating his heart could take.

He’d have to entertain himself. He could do that, right? Sure.

…

…

What was Five reading?

…

…

Five turned another page, then opened a pen with his mouth and scrawled a series of letters and numbers in his notebook.

…

…

“Whatcha working on?”

Five heaved an exaggerated sigh towards the ceiling. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

“Awww, come on. Tell me what it is. Maybe I can help.”

He could feel Five’s head pivot towards him and tilted his own head up to meet his brother’s gaze. It put his neck at an uncomfortable angle, but, honestly, what wasn’t uncomfortable at this point?

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Five said.

Klaus pulled himself up with a put-upon sigh to allow Five to disappear upstairs. It had been a valiant effort on his part. And he had not lost the game of chicken. His perfect record remained untarnished. Five had not pushed him away, nor had he disappeared out from under him and let him fall onto the couch, both of which seemed to be positive signs.

Klaus halfway expected Five to stay upstairs, but after a few minutes, he reappeared and sat back down in his spot. Klaus had already taken up his previous position at the end of the couch. He pushed his feet back against Five’s leg. Without breaking his settling-back-in routine, Five picked up Klaus’s feet and put them in his lap.

_I’ll be damned_ , Klaus thought, smothering a smile into his knitting.

They worked in silence until it was time for dinner.

* * *

The thing was, it was starting to grate on her. Playing house.

She loved Diego. And the friendship with Vanya had been unexpected, but beneficial. Not only beneficial in a transactional way, but…it was nice. Nice to have people to talk to without worrying that they had underlying reasons for approaching her.

It was also smothering. They wanted to do things together all the time. She was sharing a bedroom with Diego, so even sleep offered no privacy. She was having to learn how to adapt to the social interaction that was expected of her, and the learning curve was steep. Luckily, she’d been trained to learn quickly, and she certainly wasn’t new to having to meet expectations. The Handler had set the bar so high it was a miracle she’d won her approval. It was different here. He tried not to show it, but Diego was looking for something from her. Something she wasn’t able to provide.

More than anything, she felt like she was losing herself, giving herself up to this house and these people, even though she didn’t really know who she had been before that she was giving up. That didn’t negate the feeling that she was becoming someone different. If anything, it made it worse. How could she know if she liked who she was becoming when she'd spent her whole life being molded into someone who was meant to be whatever her mark wanted? She was good at it, at becoming who she needed to be to get the job done. Reflecting back whatever the person in front of her wanted to see.

Who did that make her? What did that leave her with when there was no job to finish? When she was just…becoming?

She was being molded into someone new again. Just because it wasn’t the Handler doing it, just because it wasn’t intentional, didn’t mean it wasn’t happening.

Escaping the Handler – or watching her get murdered in front of her, as it were – was supposed to free her to be able to find out who she was. But the Handler’s death hadn’t freed her from the past. She was still tied down. She needed to cut away the vestiges of her life with the Handler and start new. What was dragging her down?

Better question: What had brought her here in the first place?

It had been eroded away by Becoming and Expectations, but was never completely lost. As much as she'd love to say that purpose was Diego, well, she was never one to define her sense of self by a man or a relationship.

No, she’d come here with a purpose. She’d come here with every intention of playing with Five like a lion with its prey, of slowly dismantling his life until he had nothing left to stand on.

_This isn’t gonna be quick. You are going to suffer for what you did._

But he hadn’t suffered. Instead, she and Five had established some kind of cautious unspoken truce. They poked at each other, then retreated to their respective corners afterwards.

Like-

Like-

Siblings.

She hated it.

Her whole life had been turned upside down, and now she was living with her parents’ murderer, the man who cost her a normal life with her family.

And she wasn’t deaf. She’d heard Five and Diego’s little tiff in the courtyard. Every time Five looks at her, he sees the Handler. Well, every time she looks at him, she hears gunshots, smells blood. Every time she looks at him, she’s reminded of what she lost. Of the last remaining obstacle tying her to her old life, keeping her from figuring out who she might be able to be.

Number Five was a problem.

“Lila?” Diego’s voice floated up the stairs. “I’m heading to the corner store. You want any snacks for the movie tomorrow?”

She sniffed, wiped the beginnings of tears from her eyes, huffed out a breath, then painted a smile on her face.

“Yeah, I’ll come with you,” she yelled back down.

She headed downstairs with the echo of her lessons on her mind.

_How do we solve problems, dear?_

_We eliminate them._

* * *

**Movie Night Week 4: RoboCop**

“I want to watch an action movie! Pleeeeaaase?” Lila gave her best pleading face, lip stuck out like a child.

“Fine,” Diego sighed, “action movie it is. Any preferences?”

“Something with lots of explosions?”

“Missing your time wreaking havoc on the world?”

“Maybe,” she said with an innocent smile.

“Ugh, fine.”

Diego pulled her onto the couch with him. Vanya sat on the other side, socked feet nearly touching Lila’s. Klaus curled up on the oversized chair for a change.

Five went upstairs as the opening scene played.

Lila followed him with her eyes, mind ringing with gunshots and, underneath it all, a ticking clock with a countdown that was finally approaching zero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five and Lila both reminding each other of the Handler has now become one of my favorite headcanons.
> 
> If you’re into musical inspiration, I will say I listened to The Black Keys’ “Lonely Boy” while writing some of the Diego and Lila scenes. 
> 
> For movie picks, I didn’t want to pick anything too recent since the show is anachronistic. Ben quoted Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody (Backstreet's Back)” in season 2 so, since that came out in 1997, I decided anything that came out before it was fair game. We are truly blessed that Romeo + Juliet came out in 1996. I’ll confess that I have never seen RoboCop, but it seems like it would be a noisy action movie. Most of the other options I came up with dealt with wars or jungles or time-traveling assassins out to kill parents and I felt like those would be avoided for Klaus and Lila's sakes.
> 
> Good news! Set-up is now done. Next chapter includes Action. And we finally return to our favorite teenage old man’s perspective! See you then!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter from only one character’s perspective? It’s more likely than you might think. 
> 
> Also, we have a chapter that’s started by a definition that isn’t of one of the seven types of love. This one felt appropriate though. The definition comes from Merriam-Webster. 
> 
> Keep in mind that this is Five’s POV and, thus, may not actually fully mesh with reality. This is the case for every piece of this story so far to the degree that no narrator here has the full picture of what’s going on, but it feels especially obvious with Five.
> 
> As always, your comments and kudos inspire me! I love hearing the different parts that stood out to y’all and the interactions you particularly enjoyed (Klaus and Five were def fan favorites from that last chapter). This one will be a bit different since it’s only one character’s perspective, but hopefully you still enjoy it.
> 
> (Note: I posted this a little while ago and something weird happened with it, so I deleted that and reposted the chapter. I don't know if that does something with notifications, but if it does then sorry about that!)

* * *

_Obsession: a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea or feeling_

* * *

The movie was already rumbling downstairs when Five got up to his room. His siblings maintained that action movies needed to be loud enough that you couldn’t think - something to do with covering plot holes. The ridiculous surround sound system Klaus had insisted on meant that, even up here, he wasn’t safe from the noise. Five was pretty sure Klaus was playing a long game with the sound system and that he would eventually pick a movie with a disproportionate number of sex scenes then bask in everyone’s discomfort. He’d voiced this concern, but Klaus had won in the end, what with two brothers who were explosion-loving jocks, one sister who was an actor, and another who was an energy-eating music lover all on his side.

The walls rumbled again as if to prove a point.

With a sigh, Five opened window to let air in. If he remembered right, now was the time of year they’d be getting that last of the spring coolness before summer hit. It had admittedly been a while since he’d experienced May in this part of the country when it wasn’t oscillating between the weather extremes of an apocalypse, but his theory had been supported so far. It was cool at night and warm enough during day that outdoor training had become a regular occurrence.

Lila and Vanya had been out doing just that until right before dinner. Vanya, persistent as ever, had asked if he wanted to join them. Her requests were starting to dwindle, and she would no doubt give up completely at some point. Regret pulsed in his chest like an ember in rubble. He hated turning her down, hated seeing her unsurprised resignation every time he said no. If she would just ask him when Lila wasn’t around, he would agree. But for the time being, the skill that needed the most training was his ability to rewind time, and like hell was he going to give Lila the chance to pick that up.

Imagine the damage she could do if she learned how to control it.

Imagine the damage she could do if she used it but couldn’t control it.

He shuddered. It gave him enough pause using that particular power on his own. After the initial rush of accomplishment, it had taken him weeks to build up to attempting it again, some subconscious part of him forcing it to flicker out whenever he tried. It turned out one success in a time of desperation didn’t outweigh the conditioning instilled by three catastrophic failures, especially when the success had only come once he had nothing to lose. He was getting there, had built up to a few minutes at a time while Lila went galivanting off on her own or with his siblings. Still, at best it was unreliable and at worst…apocalyptic wasn’t quite the right word, but that was what stuck in his head so apocalyptic it was. Who knew what Lila would try if given the opportunity?

He picked up a text on theoretical physics and opened it to the page he’d bookmarked, then flipped open one of his blue notebooks.

An hour passed, broken up only by the occasional rumble of whatever action movie trash his siblings and Lila were watching downstairs.

He was working his way through a particularly important section, but his mind kept wandering. He huffed and looked out the window into the night. This had been a problem for weeks now, ever since they got back, really. He kept going back to the barn. All he ever did was work in circles, no closer to uncovering an answer than he was a month and a half ago. There were no equations that could help him, no variables to input, nothing to balance. His usual methods were spent, yet every day his mind returned to it, trying desperately to think through a logical answer.

Maybe he was just too old. He’d been gone so long and now he was mentally well over 20 years his siblings’ senior and physically nearly 20 years their junior. Why should they care, especially Diego, who hated age and authority?

Given the choice between two Commission assassins, why wouldn’t Diego choose Lila to love?

_Why do you assume he can’t love you both?_ a voice that sounded suspiciously like Delores murmured. 

A reasonable question. Why couldn’t Diego love them both? He and Diego had grown up together, even if that was well in the past. That had to count for something.

Had he and Diego been close when they were younger? He didn’t think so, but it had been a long time ago. Any memories he had of his childhood had long been cracked and colored with age. Corrupted, like he was.

As far as those memories went, it had always been the lower numbers on their own and the upper numbers separating off by themselves with Klaus splitting the middle bouncing between them. Five had thought about his relationships with his siblings a lot in the apocalypse. In a way, he and Diego had the most similar powers. They both deal with trajectory. Diego’s happened to be focused on the physical aspects of trajectory while Five’s were more abstract representations of space and time, calculating trajectories of events and butterfly effects, bending space itself the way Diego maneuvered projectiles. Diego certainly didn’t have to do the calculations Five did, but he was no doubt gifted at geometry.

And yet they’d never really connected. Their personalities as children didn’t mesh. Diego was brawn to Five’s brains. He was in-your-face masculinity while Five couldn’t care less how much muscle mass he had as long as he could leverage what he did have to his advantage. Diego would fight at the drop of a hat where Five far preferred a battle of wits, though he could obviously more than hold his own in a physical fight.

Despite their passive animosity growing up, he’d thought Diego and he had been getting along okay. Sure, they snarked and snapped at each other, but that was what family did, right?

Except…

_I know what it’s like to love dangerous people. The difference is they love me back._

And he’d looked at every one of their siblings but him.

It had hurt, he could admit in the confines of his own mind. It still did, but he pushed the pain down. It was easier when there was a puzzle to solve. A puzzle he could deal with.

Two possibilities were set out by Diego’s statement and Five’s lack of inclusion in it. One, Diego thought Five didn’t love him. Two, Diego didn’t love Five.

Which one was applicable here?

He put the pen he’d been fidgeting with in his mouth and dug around under his bed to find a yellow notebook. Allison’s gift, aside from being surprisingly practical, gave him a system to color code by. Blue was for physics notes, red for likelihood another apocalypse would be triggered and green for likelihood Lila would murder his family – both thankfully low. Black was for work he was secretly doing for Herb, which was another story for another time.

He pulled the notebook he was searching for from its hiding place.

Yellow notebooks were for the intense, psychologically taxing burden of trying to figure out if and why his brother didn’t love him.

He flicked to one of the first pages. The notes were smudged with wear, the questions he’d just asked himself staring back at him, bold and underlined as they were in his head. The pages that followed were full of scratched out probabilities and notations about new events to more fully inform his analysis.

On the surface, the more obvious answer seemed to be that Diego didn’t think Five loved him. Five was more than willing to acknowledge that he was aloof. He’d been gone for so long, and it wasn’t like he was the most emotive of children growing up when it came to things like affection. He’d managed to antagonize Diego almost as soon as he came back by questioning his intelligence - as if it was Five’s fault that Diego’s gifts lay elsewhere – then not showing much regard for Diego’s friend’s death - though Diego shouldn’t have taken that as any indication of Five’s feelings for Diego himself.

Then, of course, there was the disaster that was the 1960s. He’d left Diego in that institution. For his own good, but Diego probably hadn’t seen it that way and Five couldn’t help but wince at his asterisked note about Diego’s phobia of needles. Five had also been dismissive when Reginald had stabbed Diego. That was, in part, because he was frustrated at Diego’s absurd single-minded focus on saving JFK and his insistence that Lila stay with them – which Five had been right to question, thank you very much – and in part because it was a minor injury. Right? They’d had worse growing up. He’d had worse in the apocalypse and at the Commission. They’d joked about it at the consulate, so it seemed fine. Probably. But maybe not. It seemed to have passed once Lila’s duplicity was revealed. Admittedly, he hadn’t conveyed that revelation in the most delicate of ways, but he’d had a hard day. And then he’d been incredulous about Diego’s Commission experience. That was completely fair, so Diego shouldn’t be mad about it.

None of that actually mattered though because it was countered by the fact that Five did, in fact, love Diego. The thought that Diego might not know that after everything Five had done was so baffling that he couldn’t fully comprehend it. Even with Five being an abrasive asshole, Diego had to know he cared. Five had saved the world for their family. For him. What more could Five possibly give?

That brought him to option two: Diego didn’t love him.

When Five came back, Diego was angry and combative, always ready to strike out first. He’d appeared to hold resentment and disdain for all their siblings, barely tolerating any of them. Of course, now Diego was on reasonably good terms with everybody, even Luther. They’d all managed to work through their issues with each other somehow. They just hadn’t included Five in the process.

So what was it about Five specifically that was different for Diego?

For starters, Five had been gone for almost 17 years. His first interactions with Diego involved the aforementioned antagonism, including Luther holding Diego back from attacking him not once, but twice. Diego been willing enough to jump into the hunt for Harold Jenkins, but that wasn’t necessarily an indication of love towards Five as much as a grieving vigilante searching for an outlet. Then they’d clashed in the 60s. He’d stood behind Luther and did nothing when Luther threw him off the staircase. He’d chosen Lila, a woman he’d barely known for three months, over Five at every turn until she’d shown her hand at the consulate. Even then, he hadn’t wanted to believe Five when Five told him she was Commission.

None of that pointed to love or even concern.

Until he’d gone and thrown himself into the path of oncoming bullets so Five could escape. It was, hands down, the greatest act of sentimental commitment anyone had shown for him since he’d come back.

Then the barn happened.

What was he supposed to do with that?

Did the action override the lack of inclusion in the declaration? Or had Diego just been trying to make sure Five was safe because Five was their best chance at getting back to their own time?

Things had been even more confusing since they’d returned to 2019. Diego bought him marshmallows. He teased him non-combatively. He tried to include him in movie nights, at least in the beginning. But he spent most of his time with Lila, disregarding Five’s concerns, and then…

_I don’t know why you bothered coming back._

Which might have been an indication that he thought Five didn’t care for him and their siblings, but what if it was Diego’s way of saying “Why did you even bother? None of us want you here.”

The pages in the yellow notebook after his and Diego’s argument were a mess of almost illegible chicken scratch, words written on top of each other and probabilities noted then discarded rapid-fire. He wrote out some more equations. None of them felt right.

His conclusion, as always, was that Diego might not love him. It was still in question. No further progress made.

He was getting more and more convinced that there was something in the utterance itself he was missing, some nonverbal cue he wasn’t attuned to after so long away from his siblings.

Unfortunately, his questions had naturally expanded once he had started his analysis. He skipped several pages further into the notebook.

If Diego maybe – probably – didn’t love him, what about the rest of his siblings? Where did they stand?

Luther had rejected him, thrown him off a staircase, then plotted to kill him.

_You’re the genius who said we should jump back, right? You’re the one who got us stuck here._

_If I was gonna do something to stop it, it sure as hell is not gonna be with you._

Five had dragged Vanya away from Sissy and Harlan. Not that she could have stayed, but he was the one who had to tell her that, which made him the face of that particular loss. And she hadn't seemed too keen on him when she didn’t have her memories.

_I can’t help you._

_Why do you get to decide? You’re the reason we’re stuck here in the first place._

Maybe memories of their childhood were all that they had, nothing more than a shadow of the past connecting them through familial obligation and shared trauma.

Allison was a toss-up. He'd pulled her away from a husband, but she'd gotten Claire in return. She’d had to spend two years in a time where the color of her skin made her even more of a target than in 2019, but she'd seemed to gain purpose in her activist work. She was the sibling he’d spent the least time with and, thus, was the hardest to get a read on. Their almost daily calls boded well though.

Klaus, at least, seemed to hold Five in some type of regard. The 60s hadn’t been too awful for him, and, despite not having much interaction when they were there, he was spending a lot of time with Five now. It was possible Klaus was looking for a replacement for Ben in Five, that Five was the only one around who fit the bill of being by himself enough to qualify. Still, over the past few weeks, Klaus had continued to choose Five’s company over others.

None of it meant he was loved.

 _It doesn’t mean you aren’t loved either_ , Delores’s voice whispered.

Perhaps. But he had to prepare for the eventuality that the former was true.

The barn flashed through his mind again, the way his chest hurt far more in that moment than when he was bullet-riddled and lying on the ground after the Handler had mowed them down. He’d done so much – worked _so hard_ – to get back to them, to save them, with such resolute focus that he never even considered that they might not actually care. He hadn’t really thought he wanted their love after so long on his own, irreparably damaged by isolation then assassination. It shouldn’t matter whether they cared. He’d saved them. He’d saved them because he needed them to be saved. He didn’t need anything more than that, certainly not their love or affection or gratitude. He wasn’t looking for happy.

He could almost deal with it. It had been a long time since he’d been with them, so it would make sense that they would be distant, that it might take time to reconnect - if they reconnected at all.

Except then there was Lila.

 _I love her_ , Diego’s voice echoed.

But not him.

And that was fine.

It was _fine_.

If only he could figure out why. Which brought him right back to square one. He flicked the notebook closed with a frustrated grunt and tossed it back under the bed. He could hear some of the pages crinkle, knew he’d regret it later when he had to smooth out the crumpled bits. Whatever. He’d deal with it then.

He picked his physics text up again. If he couldn’t solve that problem, he could at least make some progress on this. Its spine cracked as he opened it perhaps a bit more aggressively than he intended.

He read three sentences then proceeded to run through every interaction he’d had with his siblings since his return in detail.

Like a normal person.

A normal person who had been staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes. He sighed and started the paragraph over.

“Jesus, what did that book do to you?”

Lila was leaning in his doorway. She’d clearly been there long enough to see him glaring daggers at a book, so that was embarrassing. As if it wasn't already shameful enough that he hadn’t heard her come up the stairs.

“Physics and I have a tumultuous relationship,” he said, setting the book in his lap. He stayed reclined on the bed, purposefully nonchalant. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Lila smiled the same smile she’d had during their confrontation at the warehouse.

_You said next time you saw me you’d kill me._

That had obviously changed, if only because he couldn’t do that to Diego. Diego loved her. Even if he didn’t love hi-

Stop. Prioritize.

Lila stepped further into his room, moving to his desk. She picked up one of his old three-ring binders and started paging through it.

“How long did you work for the Commission?” she asked.

“I believe that information is in my file, which your mother no doubt made you memorize.”

“She’s not my mother,” Lila snapped back.

“Fair enough,” he conceded with a nod.

She kept flipping through the binder. He was fairly certain it was his English assignments from when he was around 11 or 12 years old. There was nothing interesting in it. He knew it. She knew it. It was a power move, encroaching on his space, testing limits. Lila was getting a lay of the land and showing him what she could do. He knew because he’d done the same thing when he’d discussed the weapons with the Handler in her office. Commission Tactics 101.

“The version she gave me had to have been edited,” Lila admitted, never looking up from the binder.

Ah, right. It was unclear at what point she’d learned he’d been the assassin assigned to her parents, but it hadn’t been until after they’d met. Based on her reaction to him towards the end, it couldn’t have been before the Handler presented her deal to him. They’d been antagonistic towards each other until that point, but not malicious. Even Lila wasn’t that good an actor. If his file had his kills attached to it, the Handler would have had to have doctored it to keep Lila in the dark.

“She wouldn’t have changed anything she didn’t have to,” he said.

“I suppose she wouldn’t have,” she responded, finally returning the binder to its place. “It was an impressive file. Do you regret it? Any of what you did?”

Five frowned. “Where is this coming from?”

“It’s a simple question. I want to know if you regret anything you did for the Commission. For the Handler.”

Five paused, giving enough thought to show Lila he meant what he said. “I took pride in doing my job well. But I never enjoyed it.”

Lila scoffed with a humorless smile. “I heard what you did to the Board of Directors. You sure you didn’t enjoy it?”

Five stayed silent, staring at her unblinking. The thing was, she wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t thought he’d enjoyed it. Usually he didn’t. But weeks later, he still remembered how he felt in that lodge in Wisconsin, the rush of taking lives for a purpose, lives of people who had likely been involved with his recruitment to the Commission. People who had left him to rot in the apocalypse until his hair grayed and his joints ached…

There hadn’t been a mirror in the conference room, but he knew he’d been grinning, maniacal and uncontrolled, for at least part of it. Maybe it was the circumstances, knowing who he was killing and that they deserved it. But sometimes he had to wonder how much he might be lying to himself to stay sane.

Lila smirked at his non-response. “Seems like you went a little overboard for someone who wasn’t having fun along the way.”

“I did what I had to do to get my family home,” he said.

“You murdered a dozen people with an axe in less than two minutes. That’s some next level shit.”

 _Eleven people_ , he mentally corrected, though he supposed if the Handler killed Carmichael then he was indirectly responsible for that as well. It didn’t seem worth the argument.

He lay the book on the nightstand and sat up, sitting cross legged near the edge of the bed and leaning his elbows on his knees. “You’re not exactly the paragon of virtue either. Is there a reason you’re bringing up my previous employment?”

“I’m just saying,” she shrugged, pushing his old toy truck back and forth. “For all your reformed assassin with a heart of gold crap, you sure are dodging the question of whether you regret what you did.”

He narrowed his eyes at the familiar phrasing. She peeked up from under her bangs. She was trying to get a reaction, prodding at him purposely. Just like her goddamn mother.

“Why are you here, Lila? Almost six weeks we’ve avoided being alone in a room together and here you are, seeking me out.”

Lila was silent, for the first time looking less than completely self-assured. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do,” Five said, head tilted to the side. “You know, after all this time, I wasn’t sure you were gonna follow through.”

“Follow through with what?” she asked, brow twitching downwards.

“Don’t play dumb. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Seemed to suit me fine in 1963.”

“Crazy suited you in 1963. If you were trying to read as dumb, you failed.”

“Was that a compliment I just heard?”

“I didn’t say you were smart,” he scoffed. “Just that you weren’t dumb.”

“From you?” she returned, bobbing her head with her eyebrows raised. “That’s a compliment.”

“Take it however you like.”

Silence loomed again. Eventually, Lila let her shoulders sag and flopped back against the wall by the desk like an angsty teenager. “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t come up here to kill you?”

“Maybe,” Five shrugged. “We’re both professionals though. I’m pretty sure I’d spot the lie.”

She pursed her lips. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“It takes a lot to surprise me these days,” he responded. She kept watching him. Jesus, what more did she want from him? “I know the Handler. Mother or not, she raised you. No way would you give up on a goal that easily. Not when you’re reminded of it on a daily basis.”

They sat in quiet for a moment, broken only by the sound of the movie downstairs.

“Every time I look at you,” she finally said, voice rough, “I remember that they’re dead. I could have had a good life.”

Five was already shaking his head. “She never would have let you go. If it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been someone else.”

A solitary tear fell down Lila’s cheek. She batted it away, like she was flicking away a gnat, then steadied herself with a breath. “With you gone, I can move on.”

“Can you? And what about Diego? How does he fit into your moving on?”

She hesitated. So she did have feelings for him. That was actually somewhat of a relief. Diego wasn’t getting used again. It was just that whatever love they shared couldn’t override her need for retribution.

“He’ll live,” she finally said.

“And Vanya? You’re pretty chummy with her.”

“She’ll live too,” she bit back.

“So you aren’t going to try to hurt them?”

She had to know what he was fishing for. Assurance of his family’s safety was part of why he’d never confronted her. It was why he wouldn’t jump to them if she attacked him. He couldn’t risk them getting caught in the crossfire. And, to be honest, he didn’t have confidence that they could take her on if she decided they were acceptable collateral. He’d spent more time than he’d like to admit watching her, trying to discern her powers and their limits. They were still frustratingly opaque, but he knew she could only mirror one power at a time and it had to have been used in her proximity beforehand. How far beforehand was still an unknown. Definitely a few hours, so long as she didn’t use another power in the interim. Once she mirrored someone else, the first power would have to be used in front of her again before she could use it.

If he took the fight down to his siblings, they would use their powers indiscriminately – whether to protect him or to stop him, he wasn’t sure – but either way it would give Lila the ability to switch from power to power without limits. That alone would make her all the more difficult to defeat, but add in the hesitance to attack Lila that at least two of his siblings would no doubt put on full display and it would be a disaster, to say the least.

He needed to know how willing she was to hurt them before determining a strategy to take.

“As long as they don’t get in my way. It’s you I’m after. Besides, I-” she cut herself off, pursing her lips.

He gave a small smile. “They do grow on you, don’t they?”

She looked put out that it was true, but crossed her arms over her chest and deliberately held his gaze. “My goal isn’t to hurt your family. But I will if you make me.”

Shit. It was too hard to get a read on her. She could be bluffing. Could he risk calling her on it?

He saw his family lying dead around him, first in the apocalypse, then in the barn. His breath caught in his throat and his gut churned.

No, he couldn’t. If she made a move, he’d have to try to incapacitate her long enough to get down to his siblings and warn them. He’d just have to hope they’d believe him. It would be an uphill battle convincing Diego and Vanya he hadn’t attacked Lila first, but it was his best shot.

Now he needed to calculate the best approach to achieve that objective.

“You were training with Vanya earlier,” he said, “so that means you’re planning on using her power, right? You’re both much better at control and targeted attacks now.” He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “And that’s why you wanted the action movie. To build up energy and to keep the others occupied.”

“What, do you want a gold star for guessing? Or are you talking me through how I should kill you? God, you’re condescending.”

“What can I say, it’s a gift.”

She glowered, then pushed off the wall with a frustrated huff. “Did you really think this whole time that I would come for you?”

“You weren’t as stealthy in your preparations as you thought you were.”

“You’re a paranoid old man.”

“It’s not paranoia if they’re actually out to get you.”

“And you still let me stay around your family?”

Five shrugged. “Diego wouldn’t let me say no.”

“You don’t give two shits what Diego thinks,” she said with an ugly laugh.

“You have no idea what I would do to make sure they’re all happy and taken care of,” he snapped. “Or maybe you do. You read the Commission files. You know the things I did to buy myself enough time to calculate how to make a targeted jump without a briefcase.”

Something like wariness flickered across her face. It was the rare look of someone who knew exactly what he was capable of doing. “You don’t deserve them,” she said.

He barked out a laugh. “Neither do you. You and I, we’re not what others would consider good people, Lila. The Handler made sure of that. I can’t speak for your childhood, but decades of isolation then the Commission and everything they did to me…”

Images flashed across his vision in quick succession.

A gun range

An operating table

A bloody knife gripped in a steady hand.

He looked at her, this woman who reminded him so much of the Handler. He’d never been able to get past that. She’d used Diego and she’d nearly killed Allison. From an objective standpoint, though, they had more in common than either of them wanted to admit. In the end, they were both the Handler’s creations, too grateful to have been saved by her to notice that she was using them until it was far too late.

He was struck with a sense of déjà vu, thrown back to the car with Luther when they’d been waiting for Hazel and Cha-Cha. Confronted with someone who was lost after the betrayal of a parent they’d worked so hard to please. Luther and Lila were both so young. He didn’t like Lila. She was dangerous and untrustworthy. But if he looked past her duplicity when it came to his family, he could commiserate with her in his own way. And, unlike him, she still had time. She might not be ruined. She was loved, after all.

“I will never be someone others would consider a good person,” he continued. “I know that. But…at the risk of sounding condescending again, after we’re done here, go do something that doesn’t involve assassination.”

Lila drew back. “What?”

He wasn’t sure why he was saying it. He had no investment in her life. Maybe it was because he was the weapon the Handler used to take her. He could never take that back – would never take it back since it resulted in his family’s survival – but that didn’t mean she had to live the life the Handler had intended for her.

“Find something else to do,” he said. “Go live a life. Just do it away from my family.”

Dawning spread on Lila’s face. “Are you trying to give me advice when I’m about to kill you?”

He ignored her. “You have to leave, you know that. You kill me or you fail, either way this night ends with you running. Just…you really do care too much. Even she couldn’t train that out of you. You aren’t cut out to be an assassin. Do something better.”

Lila stood open-mouthed.

“But,” he finished with a wry smile, “if you come near my family again, I will make you regret it.”

“And if I kill you before that?” she replied, regaining some of her previous assertiveness.

“My brother is a medium,” Five said. “I’ll find a way.”

“Haunting your own brother? Isn’t he still not over the last time that happened?”

“I’m sure he’d appreciate the company.” He was sure Klaus wouldn’t, but that was neither here nor there right now.

“You’re a selfish prick,” she said. “I hate you.”

“The feeling is mutual,” he responded, whatever bout goodwill he’d had evaporating. “You stayed with Diego and befriended Vanya, built a whole life here, and for what? So you could tear them down when you inevitably walked away?”

“Not everything is about your bloody siblings,” she spat back. “Maybe- maybe this isn’t the life that I want. You ever think of that? Maybe I want to be more than your brother’s girlfriend or your sister’s bestie.” She paused, squared her shoulders, and raised her chin in defiance. “I don’t know what I want my life to be, but I know I can’t figure it out here.”

Huh. He couldn’t fault her that, as much as he’d like to. In her own twisted way, Lila was trying to find herself. That didn’t mean her methods weren’t a goddamn mess though.

“And,” she continued, stepping her foot back and shifting into a fighting position, “what you said back in the 1963 was true. She never loved me. But it doesn’t change the fact that you killed them.”

That was that, it seemed. Five gave a resigned smile. “No, it doesn’t. Shall we?”

Lila lit up like a fireworks show.

He’d never actually fought against Vanya’s power outside of the one time at the Icarus Theater, which, thinking about it, was probably part of the reason Lila had chosen it. If he wanted to stand a chance, he’d have to stay close to her. Vanya’s power was sweeping and intense. It was also loud. Even with the movie blasting downstairs, his siblings would hear if she went too hard too fast. She’d save it until she knew she could deliver a killing blow.

Five disappeared before she could focus her energy into an attack, then reappeared behind her. She kicked without looking back, clocking him right in the chest. He staggered back into his desk. A cup of pens tipped over, spilling its contents onto the desk and floor.

Foolish. In his planning for Vanya’s power, he’d forgotten to account for the fact that Lila knew his combat style. The first time they’d fought, he’d teleported behind her and gotten a solid kick in the face. Every time since, he’d pop behind her only to find she’d predicted his strategy and gained the upper hand.

Lila landed another hit. He blinked before she could turn her power on him, this time to her side instead. Sure enough, she kicked behind her again, stumbling when she met no resistance. He landed a good hit to her chin then blinked away and reappeared in front of his wardrobe. She wiped blood from her lip and lunged at him. He ducked towards his bed. She slammed into the wardrobe and whipped around.

Gunshots echoed from the movie downstairs. The walls rattled.

They circled each other.

“Alright, you little shit,” Lila said, eye fading into white. “Let’s end this.”

They lunged forward in sync. Her hand-to-hand was whip-fast. He’d called her average after their first fight. Now that she wasn’t holding back, he had to admit - however grudgingly – that she was an impressive fighter. She’d provided enough of a physical challenge to prove herself a worthy opponent.

He’d expect nothing less from someone trained by the Handler.

Unfortunately for Lila, he’d gotten the same training. They were evenly matched.

Lila caught his arm as he swung it and twisted to elbow him in the ribs. He managed to spin around her and avoid it, though it turned his wrist enough to send a lance of pain up his arm.

It was a blur from there, instinct for both of them more so than any planning. An ugly parody of a dance. Punch, block, twist, kick, fake a lunge one direction, fail to take advantage because it was seen through. He caught her with an elbow, felt her ribs crack. She hissed but didn’t slow down. He jerked to the side quick enough to miss a punch aimed right at his nose, so close he felt his hair ruffle as her fist went by. He wasn’t as lucky with her follow-up, which caught him across the chin.

He avoided what no doubt would’ve been a devastating hit to his sternum only to realize that that separated them enough for Vanya’s power became an option.

“Shit.”

He leapt forward and grabbed her forearms just as she released a controlled burst of power. It pulsed out like a shield, tossing stray objects across the floor. He held tight to her, a death grip that made it so the wave scraped his feet back a few inches instead of slamming him into the wall. Without pause, he kneed her in the stomach, ducked when she pulled one of her arms free and swung it wide.

And they were back at it again. Rapid moves, so quick he was barely keeping up with the consciously. He almost got her down several times before being countered and forced to blink away at the last minute. They were both panting with exertion. Her lip was bleeding and her cheek swelling. She was favoring the ribs he’d elbowed. He knew he had a few burgeoning bruises on his face and several new aches across various body parts, some sharper than others. He only had one or two jumps left in him, he could tell. This had to end soon.

Lila took a swipe at his face. He countered with a wide swing of his own that she ducked easily. This time, her elbow did manage to catch him, but he hopped at exactly the right time to avoid a kick that likely would have shattered his ankle. She fell to one knee.

Clasping his hands together, he brought them down for a knock-out hit only for her to spin on her knee and grab both his wrists.

Oh shit, shit, shit. That was a mistake.

Judging by the ominous smile that snaked over her face, she knew it too. It was too close to the expression she’d had as she watched Allison choke on her own rumor with Luther begging her to breathe – basking in power, yet somehow surprised to see the plan had come to fruition.

Lila pulled him forward then tossed him backwards and let go. He stumbled a few steps.

Just enough that she could send out another pulse of power before he regained his footing.

Five was flung against the wall and crashed to the floor. It knocked the breath out of him. For a moment, all he could do was lay there and gasp, blinking back stars from hitting his head.

He dug deep, reaching for the time stream. If he could go back a few seconds, that’s all he would need. His fists started sparking, the familiar blue glow flickering to life.

The air screamed around him, a sound he recognized from Vanya pulling energy from the environment. It was a race. Whoever could gather their energy first would win.

Lila was faster.

Before he could focus his power, it was sputtering out, and he was being lifted up in the air. And wasn’t that a familiar feeling? Dangling in the air with - what had Diego called it? An energy tentacle? Dangling in the air with an energy tentacle through his chest. Again.

Fantastic.

Of the ways to go, there were much worse. It certainly beat being bludgeoned to death with sound waves and being shot in the chest and left to slowly bleed out.

His chest started throbbing in time with his heartbeat. He couldn’t breathe.

Didn’t mean there weren’t better ways to go.

It hurt more than last time. A lot more. Vanya had kept four of them suspended and drained them. It had felt exactly like that. A draining of energy, slow, like water down a pipe. Like she had all the time in the world to slowly drip them dry of their life force.

Lila didn’t have all the time in the world, and she was focused on one person. There was a chance his siblings hadn’t heard the thump of him hitting the wall and floor over the movie, but it wasn’t high. If they had, Lila didn’t have time to dawdle, a fact which she seemed keenly aware of. Where Vanya was slow and steady, Lila was sucking him dry like a vacuum, pulling quickly and efficiently until there was nothing left.

The pain increased. Everything hurt. He was pretty sure he’d be screaming if he had control of his lungs. It felt like his insides were collapsing in on themselves. Maybe they were.

He couldn’t move of his own volition, but he felt his body rebelling, making a last desperate attempt to survive. His legs spasmed and his foot caught the lamp on his desk. It crashed to the ground. Lila burned brighter for a moment.

Part of him wished he’d gotten more time with his siblings. Another part knew this was the end he had earned after so much death and destruction and killing. He’d known as soon as he’d decided to break his contract with the Commission that the chances of him coming out alive at the other end were miniscule.

He just wished it wasn’t the Handler who had done it. Because this was the Handler. Even if Lila was the one holding the metaphorical gun, the Handler was the one pulling the trigger. In the end, she had gotten her revenge.

What a shame. Though, he supposed, not unfair.

His legs and arms finally gave up, hanging uselessly in the air. He took one more choked off breath, then everything grayed out into static.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How are we all feeling? We doing okay? I’d say “boy, that escalated quickly!” but we’re, like, 20K words in at this point so that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. 
> 
> I spent an inordinate amount of time writing out Lila’s powers and making some assumptions from what we saw in the show as to their limits. I also wrote multiple fight scenarios. It was a whole thing. Through this, I discovered I want a fight between Five and Lila where they’re both using his time travel powers. I also discovered I’m fascinated by Five and Lila’s dynamic as two people who the Handler manipulated into becoming assassins. But those thoughts are for another day.
> 
> Last thing: I have been and will continue to hint at the idea that the Commission messed with Five’s DNA like they did in the comics (e.g., the medical table flash, “everything they did to me”). At this point, I have no major plans to fully explore it. That may change, but that’s where things stand right now.


End file.
